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Chapter Text

The force of the explosion was enough to make them all stagger on their feet, even at their considerable distance. Reid’s head snapped around in horror - there were supposed to be children in there.

“No…” J.J. breathed in agony beside him, and he knew she was thinking the same thing.

Hotch barked orders over the radio, calling for fire and SWAT and whoever else might be on the periphery that could help. Distantly, Reid recognized the edge of panic in his voice that only those who knew the Unit Chief well could distinguish. For a split second before he acted, Reid spared a thought for his boss - Sorry, Hotch, but I have to - and then he was gone, running towards the burning farm house and ripping the comm. unit from his ear to silence Hotch’s angry growl.

The front of the house was gone, walls at unnatural angles pointing upwards to the night sky and the sparks cascading through it. The heat was obscene, searing him even before he leapt over the burning threshold and really experienced it. He stumbled in, tripping over furniture and wood and brick. The smoke stung his eyes and they began to water so much that things went in and out of focus. His feet slid as he tried to move quickly, calling out for survivors but giving up when he just ended up coughing instead. He walked across something that shifted unexpectedly and he looked down to realize he was standing on someone. He almost lost it then, almost retreated. But the body was still, blackened, and he knew there was nothing he could do for them. He moved in deeper.

The center of the house was an inferno. He stood in the doorway of what must have been a meeting room of some kind and took in the scene for a terrifying second. There were bodies everywhere. Some were on fire, none of them moved. The walls were hissing like living things and the support beams of the roof made ominous cracking sounds that said he had seconds before it collapsed like the front of the building had. His eyes burned, he could barely breathe, he couldn’t see anything… and then he heard a single cry. He blinked savagely, wiping his hands at the smoke in front of him as if he could clear it away.

“Hello?” he coughed.

He heard the cry again but it sounded a lot like the shrill hissing of the flames consuming the room. It could’ve been just that. He stepped into the room and ran through the bodies quickly trying to catch any movement before he had to leave to save himself. There was a howl, loud and sharp to his left, and he dove pulling at a woman’s body who was limp but unburned. She was already gone, half her chest blown away when he rolled her to him, but there under her was a baby covered in blood. The child’s eyes were white moons in her gore-riddled face and her mouth seemed too small for the scream she made when she saw him. He scooped her up, tearing his Kevlar from him and wrapping it around her as she continued screaming and yanking his hair in her tiny fist.

“Got you,” he half-whispered, half-coughed and then sprinted for the doorway blurring before him.

He was stymied on the way back; hallway walls had crumbled into flaming barriers and the smoke was so thick and cloying that he got turned around, backing into a stairwell he didn’t remember on the way in and trying to calm down and think.

“C’mon, Reid, c’mon…” he hissed and closed his eyes tightly to try clearing them while also attempting to call up a floor plan of the farm house in his mind. The baby’s cries were less frantic but when he looked at her she seemed listless and that more than anything spurred him to move. Screw it. Follow the flames… they’ll always point to fresh air. And they did. He knew he stepped on more bodies as he went, and he felt the slice of flames burning through his shirt to the skin underneath, but he kept moving until he found himself in front of a cracked window. Ground floor… we can make it… He clutched the baby close and threw himself through the window, glass shards scraping his burned arms and stabbing into his legs. He landed with a grunt, miraculously under the baby, and then he hopped up and kept running before his brain could tell him how injured he was. The burnt grass crackled under his feet until the blurring red and blue lights became everything he could see. Hands grabbed him, tried to get him to sit down.

“Hey, buddy, stop stop stop…”

“Baby,” he coughed uncontrollably. “First.”

“George, oxygen mask, now,” the voice said. “It’s okay, give her to us, alright?”

His hands unclenched and when the burden was lifted from him, the baby howled miserably. Reid smiled: if she could complain that was a good sign. Something tugged on his hair and he turned with a hiss.

“Oh hey, let go, little one, c’mon now. Let’s have a look at you…” Rubber gloves worked at the baby’s fist until she released Reid’s hair. Someone chuckled and it sounded alien against all of the shouting and burning. “She’s real attached to you, FBI.”

Reid grimaced but then another set of rubber gloves began manhandling him. “Sit here,” they said, and then he tried to stay still as they rinsed his eyes until he could almost make out shapes again. “You’re gonna need some stitches and we’ll have to take you to the ER for the burns. Don’t want ‘em to get infected…”

An oxygen mask was strapped to his face and ten minutes later he felt more like himself and absolutely terrible all over. A paramedic appeared in front of him, still blurry but smiling, and then shuffled forward with a white bundle.

“So, good work, FBI. She’s gonna be fine.” Who? Oh right, the baby… and since she was born into a doomsday cult and subsequently lost her deranged family in a fire, chances are the paramedic’s assessment was overly optimistic. “Listen, this scene’s still pretty wild and I can’t sit around waiting for Child Protective Services to show. So… would you help a guy out?”

The paramedic shoved the white bundle at Reid and he gasped a muffled ‘hey!’ into his oxygen mask.

“Like I said, she’s fine so, just… don’t drop her ‘til I get back.” Then the guy was off like a shot before Reid could complain.

Reid’s burned arms grumbled under their bandages but he cradled the baby without thinking about it first. He sputtered uselessly after the fleeing paramedic and then looked down when she cried out softly. She was blurry too but he could make out the confused, scared expression and the sooty smudges where her tears were drying. If there was one thing Reid understood it was that kind of irrational fear that left you exhausted and numb, waiting for whatever horror came next. He bent closer so she could see him better, thumbing his oxygen mask off to the side.

“This is a terrible thing,” he murmured roughly. “But I promise you it’ll get better. You don’t know me but I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She fussed a little, a tiny hand escaping her blanket and reaching for his face as she squirmed. There was a singed bracelet on her wrist woven from once-colorful string. Reid twisted it around with his finger and it revealed a name: Olivia. Reid grinned even though his face hurt. It was as if they’d just been introduced.

“Hello, Olivia,” he coughed gently. “I’m Spencer.”

Olivia’s face creased up and her chest hitched in tiny half-sobs but she just stared at him warily and pouted. Her hand found its way to his hair again and yanked.

“Ow!” he huffed but didn’t free himself from her grip. And that’s how his team found them, sitting on the lip of an ambulance staring at each other curiously.

----

The nearest CPS office was two towns away and since the whole cult debacle had happened over a weekend there was no one available when the Bureau called about Olivia. The local police suggested sending her to the children’s ward of the county hospital until the mess could be sorted out, but there wasn’t anything wrong with her and she’d be mostly alone there anyway. Reid became oddly territorial about it all and decided not to think about why he was reacting so strongly.

“She can stay with us,” he said in a tone that indicated he considered the subject closed, and then marched out of the PD’s conference room while his colleagues looked at him as if he’d lost his brilliant mind.

The case was still ongoing and there was plenty to do. They were sleeping in shifts at the PD and it didn’t seem like that much of a stretch to take a break every once in a while for a feeding or diaper change or an opportunity to tell an age-inappropriate story to a baby. In the end, they all helped out but Reid did the lion’s share of the hovering.

“Ugh,” he tsked as he changed Olivia’s diaper on the conference room table. “Diaper rash…”

Olivia wriggled and smiled as the cool air hit her tiny bum. J.J. chuckled and handed him a bottle of cream that mysteriously manifested from her go bag.

“You’re so much better at this than you used to be, Spence. My boys have trained you well.”

“Once you get past the freeform terror of it, it basically boils down to practicalities, doesn’t it?” He winced as he cleaned Olivia. Olivia just ‘wooed’ as he applied the cream.

J.J. laughed heartily and Reid looked up at her with a raised eyebrow. “Not really, Spence. Raising a baby is about 80% love, otherwise we’d kill them while they slept just to get a modicum of peace back in our lives.”

“Jennifer, that’s horrific,” he deadpanned.

J.J. shrugged and then moved to stand beside him, looking down at Olivia and laying a hand on his shoulder in the process. “She’s beautiful. Look at those eyes…”

Olivia smiled at them both, happy to be the center of attention. She had dark eyes and olive skin, and thick knot of dark brown tangles that stood away from her head like a curled exclamation of excitement. Other than the rash, she was absolutely perfect. Well, that’s what Reid thought anyway…

“I wonder if she has any other family,” he said quietly, something sinking deep in his chest. J.J. squeezed his shoulder.

“If there is, we’ll find them.”

“Yeah.” He fastened her diaper and lifted her up against his chest. He held her close for a moment and then was going to pass her to J.J. when he found his friend watching him with a soft expression.

“You’re good at this because you’ve learned to be. But you’re also good at it because you want to be.”

Reid blinked as his heart stuttered and then restarted with a painful thud. He tried not to notice; there was no sense thinking about things that you couldn’t change. Olivia made a wet burbling sound and slapped the side of his face with her tiny hand as if reaffirming his opinion on the matter. J.J. reached forward and collected her with a smile.

“C’mon, Liv, let’s go Skype with Aunt Penelope while Reid plays with his maps…”

Reid watched them leave and he found himself waving when Olivia twisted in J.J.’s arms peering at him over her shoulder.

----

Olivia slept soundly on Reid’s chest as he lay stretched out on the conference room couch reviewing the preliminary crime scene report from the fire marshal about the house explosion. She was making a drool spot on his shirt, but since he already had spit-up and diaper cream on his outfit he didn’t see the harm in a little saliva. It was late and the PD was mostly abandoned, but even still Hotch managed to creep up on him silently.

“Reid.”

He twitched a little and then stilled, watching as Olivia snuffled but didn’t wake. He looked up at Hotch with relief and saw a weird, concerned expression on his face.

“Hey,” he said quietly and with a caution he usually didn’t have to worry about. “I’m glad you’re here. I think the explosion tells us something important about our cult leader. I was going to come find you but…” He gestured to the tiny sleeping human holding him down. Hotch’s expression grew even more worried, lining his face with deep creases as Reid watched. It was disconcerting. He shook it off. “So, I’m thinking that-”

“Reid,” Hotch interrupted softly. “You can’t keep her.”

A strange mix of hurt and rage burst at the center of him in an instant. He felt his cheeks heat and even though it was dim in the conference room, he turned his face away to hide it. Why would Hotch feel compelled to tell him that? As if Reid wasn’t aware of that already… His heart rammed against his ribs and Olivia shifted in her sleep, mewling softly and grasping a button from his shirt in her fingers.

“I know that,” he said quietly but with a firmness that told Hotch to let it go.

“Perhaps.” Hotch shuffled closer. “But you’re… attached. She has to go into the system. There’s nothing we can do about that.”

Reid sighed. “I have no illusions about what’s going to happen to her.” He laid a hand lightly along her back with just enough pressure that he could feel her chest expand and contract, expand and contract. “But… I’ll never have my own kids. I guess… I guess that I’m allowing myself to pretend for a while, that’s all. And she’s making it easy for me…”

Reid knew the smile that spread over him was a sad one, but he didn’t expect Hotch to look gutted when he turned his gaze back to him. “What?”

Hotch straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat. His concern disappeared under a professional scowl with practiced efficacy. Reid was unsurprised.

“Nothing,” he murmured. “Give me what you have about the explosion findings.”

Reid handed over the report in his grip as well as pointing out some paper on the conference room table. Hotch collected it all up in silence and then turned to look at Reid over his shoulder.

“I’ll take care of this,” he said and then jutted his chin at Reid and Olivia. “Take some time. CPS will be here in the morning.”

“Alright,” Reid whispered and watched Hotch leave. Hotch didn’t turn back to look at them again.

----

Olivia cried when the lady from CPS took her from Reid’s arms. He stroked her curls and whispered, “Be good now. It’s going to get better.” But she just cried and cried as if nothing would ever be right again. Reid swallowed everything down, walking back to the conference room and past the worried stares of his team before Olivia was even out of earshot. A hand reached for him as he passed.

“Spence,” J.J.’s voice sounded wet.

“Don’t,” he gritted out. “It’s fine. I’m going to review the M.E.’s manifest again.”

They left him alone and he went back to work. In time he knew she’d just be another face in another case file. All he had to do was be patient and wait.

Chapter Text

He watched Reid from the window of his office and wondered for the hundredth time if he had the right to do this. Time had passed and they’d all moved on. Maybe this would just make it harder to forget. What if Reid saw it as pity, or worse yet: caretaking? He had a short fuse about being coddled and Hotch had learned that lesson the hard way. The last time, it had almost cost him everything.

The papers sat on his blotter silently mocking this last minute second-guessing and an email lurked in his inbox that required a response before the end of business. He couldn’t wait any longer and, really, it was already too late to change his mind. His trademark cool abandoned him as he stood, stomach heaving dangerously, and he swallowed hard and smoothed his tie before reaching his office door.

“Reid,” he called out and hooked a finger at him when their eyes met. “Can you give me a minute?”

Reid nodded and then shuffled up to Hotch’s office. Hotch closed the door behind them and he felt Reid stiffen because that wasn’t normal behavior from him.

“What’s up?”

“I have news about the Rising Sun case.” Hotch walked back behind his desk just for something to do. When he looked at Reid, he saw a sort of muted tension thrumming softly beneath his surface. “It’s been seven weeks and CPS has exhausted their leads trying to find Olivia’s family.”

At Olivia’s name, Reid physically twitched and it looked painful. Hotch hadn’t mentioned her after CPS claimed her, and once again, he doubted the mechanics of his plan.

“They’re putting her into the system,” he said woefully. “For adoption or foster care.”

Reid just nodded, the twitching muscle in his jaw the only indication that he was feeling anything. Hotch stared at him in silence, waiting.

“Is that it?” Reid asked eventually.

“Yes.” No.

Reid shrugged and curled into himself a little. He looked out Hotch’s window at nothing in particular. It was such a small, casual move, but it sliced Hotch right down the center. “You know, a majority of kids raised in foster care turn out fine. The numbers are actually a lot more optimistic than popular opinion would have you believe. And… she’s so young. It’s doubtful she’ll remember anything about her first year.”

“Why don’t you put in an application?” Hotch murmured, feeling his professional stoicism slip.

Reid snapped his gaze back to Hotch and it was hard, suspicious. “Why would you even suggest that?”

“Because you have a connection to her.”

“Hotch,” Reid snapped crisply, if not loudly. “I’m a single man with a dangerous job and a history of mental illness and drug addiction. I have limited financial means and no immediate support system. CPS would sooner give Olivia to a starving lion than me.”

“Not if you had a partner with established stability and experience raising children,” Hotch countered quickly and then strode around his desk to stand in front of Reid. “I’ve already made inquiries.”

Reid’s hurt transformed into shock as Hotch’s words sunk in. He wasn’t an overly optimistic man, but he hoped…

“B-but…” Reid’s throat worked hard before he could continue, his eyes getting glassy. “You’d… You would do that for me?”

Hotch reached for him, grabbing his hand and threading their fingers. It was more behavior that was unusual at work, and it should’ve been obvious by now how far out on a limb Hotch was prepared to go with this.

“Since we started this… you’ve never asked me for anything, Spencer. Not one thing. And you’ve given me so much.” He took a moment, looked down at their linked hands, and tried to calm his racing heart. “You’re everything to me. You and Jack. And when you told me that you’d never have children of your own… I’m a father and I know I can’t imagine my life without my son in it. But until I heard you say what you did, I’d never tried imagining what life would be like wanting a child and knowing you could never have one.”

Reid blinked hard and looked away. A tear slipped into view and he shrugged, wiping it clean with the shoulder of his shirt. Hotch’s heart seized painfully at the center of him.

“It makes no sense to me that Olivia go into a system to be bounced around from one set of strangers to the next when there’s an obvious, happier choice to be made.”

“They… they won’t, Aaron. I-I’m not fit,” he choked.

“They will,” Hotch growled and cupped Reid’s jaw pulling him into his chest. “I’ll use every trick I know, pull every string. There are literally dozens of legal arguments I could make on your behalf. I won’t stop until we bring her home.” He brushed his lips against Reid’s forehead desperately and closed his eyes. “Ask me to do this for you, Spencer. Please.”

“Why?” Reid breathed into Hotch’s collar, clutching him close in return.

“Because I was empty for so long that it came to be second nature to me. And then you arrived and I discovered that I could love someone more than I thought I could bear. That’s what you’ve given me.” Hotch pulled away just enough to look Reid in the eye. “I want to be the person who gives you the one thing you thought was beyond your reach. If everything goes to hell, I’ll still be the man who brought Olivia to you. It’s purely selfish, really.”

Reid’s hands tightened around him and Hotch couldn’t stand having any space between them. Not in this moment that seemed to be the crucible of everything between them. He leaned down and kissed him, slipping into the space that he’d long ago decided was ‘his’. Reid opened up to him, a soggy note of desperation escaping him briefly before Hotch swallowed it, banishing it with the reassuring stroke of his hands. They moved, slipped and caught, holding each other in a way that they usually hid from curious eyes. That alone made Hotch’s whole being throb with the knowledge of ‘belonging’, even if they weren’t on the cusp of becoming a legitimate family.

“Aaron…” Reid whispered wetly when they parted.

“Ask. Me.” Hotch murmured into Reid’s ear, holding him as if he’d die if he couldn’t.

“I… I want her.”

Hotch tore himself away so suddenly that Reid stumbled a little. But he reached across his desk, grabbed the paperwork and slapped it down in front of Reid. He fished a pen from his suit jacket.

“Sign this. At the line indicated by the yellow flag.”

“What is it?”

“It’s the beginning,” Hotch smiled. Reid’s hand trembled as he signed but when he finished, he was smiling too. Hotch took the pen from him and signed at a line labeled ‘Co-applicant’. “I want her too. I want her because I’ve got a suspicion that she’ll come to love you as much as I do, and you deserve that, Spencer. She deserves it too.”

Reid stared at him when he was done, flushed and worried and recklessly hopeful all at the same time. “This is nuts,” he huffed eventually, and Hotch barked out a loud laugh and pulled him into a bone-crushing hug again.

“People will start to talk…” Reid mumbled into his chest, and then they both looked out Hotch’s office windows to find the entire bullpen staring at them owlishly. “Too late,” Reid added.

Hotch found that he wasn’t embarrassed the secret they’d held so close for so long was suddenly out. His face heated but he decided he didn’t care as he dragged Reid by the shoulders to his office door, opened it, and stood proudly at the threshold with him for the first time.

“Gather around everyone. We have news.”

----

The way that Jack always tells the story about the day Hotch brought Olivia home and gave her to Reid, Olivia yanks his hair hard enough to tear some out by the roots. Hotch doesn’t remember it that way and thinks that at thirteen months old, Olivia would’ve been hard pressed to achieve that. But she did pull his hair and she giggled as she did it. Reid yelped and made a face but he couldn’t look away from her for a moment, and that’s what Hotch recalls the most.

“She remembers you,” he said softly.

“No, she doesn’t,” Reid declared, still grinning like a fool. “It was three days, six months ago. She doesn’t remember.”

Olivia made a bubbly exhortation and then squealed in ear-splitting fashion.

“She remembers you,” Hotch corrected before kissing them both, and then wandering away to give Spencer and Olivia Reid some alone time.

Chapter Text

Jack always tells her that Pop was never the same after she arrived. When she was younger and apt to believe everything her annoying older brother told her was true, that statement felt like a criticism. But as she grew up and saw both her Pop and Dad more clearly for the men they truly were, she decided that wasn’t what Jack meant at all.

Pop was always around. He never missed a school play or a recital or debate competition, and he almost never traveled. Jack said it wasn’t always that way: Pop and Dad were gone all the time when Jack was small, but when she arrived that stopped. Pop used to be FBI, like Dad was, but the badge and case files were long since gone replaced by student papers, book galleys, and lecture plans. Dad still left often, still worked insane hours that provoked terrifying fights between her parents when they thought she and Jack were asleep, but Pop always stayed. Dad told her that Pop was ‘the scariest FBI agent I ever worked with’ but he usually said it with a smile especially when Pop was in hearing distance. Dad was the indulgent one and Pop was the worrier. Jack said that was different as well because Dad always treated Jack harder than Olivia, but she just assumed it was because Jack was his natural son. She told him so every time he brought it up but it wasn’t until Jack was in his twenties and an adult himself that he conceded she might be right.

Pop was around all the time to the point where it got to be annoying. She couldn’t do anything without him knowing about it. She just wanted… well, she didn’t know what she wanted then because she was so young, but she knew that whether it was climbing to the top of the old oak tree out back or racing her bike down ‘suicide slope’ with the rest of the local kids or just hiding for a while, Pop would have something to say about it. He just wouldn’t let her be. Sometimes she made him suffer for that by being showier with Dad when he was home - like he was her favorite. Dad let it go for a while, but then told her that she was hurting Pop and for no reason other than he loved her so dearly. She cried then, thinking in a way only a seven-year-old can that Pop would hate her forever, but Dad shushed her, pulling her close, and explained why that would never happen.

He told her the story of the fire.

She listened in awed fascination, tears drying on her cheeks, to the tale of Pop leaping into the flames and climbing over poor dead people to find her. Her Pop. Sweater vest Pop. Don’t-run-in-the-house, have-you-done-your-homework-yet, it’s-may-I-not-can-I Pop. It didn’t seem possible. Dad just smiled at her disbelief.

“Most parents don’t get a say in who their children will be. But Pop chose you. He wanted you almost from the moment you two met. So consider that when he gets on your nerves.”

Dad had a way of making trouble like that go away. He tucked her back in and hummed While My Guitar Gently Weeps until she drifted and suddenly nothing seemed as bad as she thought. If Pop was stories and questions and endless curiosity, then Dad was the Beatles and quiet nights and everything that makes you sigh and think the word ‘comfort’. By way of apology she asked Pop to tell her the fire story in his own words, because if how Dad spoke about him was the real Pop, she wanted to know more. But Pop just rolled his eyes and said, “Dad should learn more appropriate bedtime stories. And also, he exaggerates.” But Dad never lied to her and she found it difficult to believe that he’d start with such a weird story about Pop.

As she grew up, it became obvious that she was different. She was solid and dark - unlike both of her fathers. Old Mr. Henderson down the street called her ‘spic’ once when she rode her bike past his yard and when she told Dad and Pop about it, it was one of the few times she saw Dad completely lose his cool. Pop held him down until the angry red flush left his face, and then he calmly went to talk to Old Man Henderson himself. When he returned he was a bit flushed too and simply said, “Some days I miss being armed”. It wasn’t a secret she was adopted even if her clear lack of resemblance to her family didn’t give it away. But it started to become more than that. Pop told her all the time that there was nothing wrong with different, that sometimes it was a blessing, but she knew he was hiding something from her. This time even Dad was a brick wall about it and so she decided she had to figure it out herself.

Even at fifteen she was too smart for her own good, and Aunt Penelope had probably showed her one too many hacking tricks. She found her CPS file online and broke into a police archive server and found the results of a DNA test done on her. Then it wasn’t hard to look up her parents and the old crime reports and news coverage of the cult’s end. The fire story was real after all. There was even a press photo of Pop, impossibly young and skinny, holding a baby with a burning house in the background. He looked horrified, bandaged and bruised, wearing a gun on his hip that temporarily blew her mind. Pop was a badass once - it was a shock. But what shocked her more was that she was the child of murderers - deranged psychopaths who thought killing a bunch of clueless people was better than facing the consequences of their actions. It was like being told you were the spawn of demons. No wonder why Pop ran himself ragged keeping an eye on her constantly. Who knows when her genes would kick in and she’d flip out on them all?

She skipped school no longer seeing the point of it. She’d never be as smart as Pop anyway. She wasn’t his daughter. She stole booze from Dad’s liquor cabinet for her friends, and then decided the taste wasn’t so bad once you got past the burning sensation. A truant officer found her and Ewan McCulloch snookered and making out under the bleachers at school. It wasn’t even that much fun – Ewan had the kissing technique of a dead fish – she just didn’t want to be herself anymore. Not when who she was turned out to be pointless and horrifying and a disappointment all around.

Surprisingly, Dad was the one who hit the roof. Pop just looked at her all silent and sad, breaking her heart, and she hated him even more for it. But it didn’t stop her. She got caught two more times (skipping class, smoking weed), and then when she got blitzed and broke into the principal’s office in an attempt to hack her midterm grades, she was finally expelled. It was two weeks past her sixteenth birthday and it felt like the end of everything. No hope, no softly hummed George Harrison lyrics to make the bad go away - just too much eyeliner making her eyes sticky, and the slow thud of a booze headache, and the escalating dread of the disappointment on the face of whichever man showed up to admit she was his daughter.

Dad was on a case, so Pop picked her up and drove her home in stony silence. She wondered what he’d do, what new restrictions she’d have to work around this time, but he just walked to the house and said, “I need a drink. Wanna join me?” She blinked, thinking it was a set up, but he didn’t look back. She could’ve run, but she didn’t and she didn’t know why. She just followed him.

They drank for an hour before he spoke again. When he did, it was sloppy and exhausted.

“Why are you so angry?”

“C’mon, Pop,” she slurred, flipping her dark hair that she’d overdyed black just to be obvious about how much she wasn’t like any of them. “Like you don’t know.”

“I don’t, Liv, I really don’t. I’m a pretty smart guy but I can’t figure you out at all.”

Olivia snorted.

“Is it… because Dad and I are gay?”

“No, Pop,” she said in a ‘duh’ voice. “People don’t care about that. Besides, you’re way too old to have sex anymore.”

Pop’s eyebrows rose in a way that suggested this was news to him. “Well then, is it because I’m weird?”

“No.”

“I can be overbearing sometimes. It’s-”

“It’s not about you!” she snapped. Why couldn’t he see? She’d done everything short of wearing a sign around her neck…

“Is it the adoption?”

She didn’t answer, just took a huge swig instead.

“I thought we cleared that up long ago.”

“You lied. You and Dad… you lied about it.”

“We did not, Olivia. We found you during a case and we adopted you when the chance arose. You’ve even heard the story about the fire. That all happened.”

“Dad said you chose me,” she turned on him, the booze kicking her hard and making tears burst before she could get a handle on them. “He said I was special because you wanted me so much you chased me down and made it happen.”

“That’s true,” he blinked, shocked by her distress.

“It’s NOT true! You chose me because you couldn’t trust me to anyone else!” she bellowed. “I found the records of the case, my birth parents… They were monsters. That’s how you found me because that’s what you and Dad did: hunted down monsters. You had to keep people safe from me because kids turn out like their parents. It was just a matter of time…”

“Olivia that’s not it at-”

“Folks always say ‘Oh, Olivia, your father’s a genius - I guess you’ll do great in school’ and then I don’t and people find out I’m adopted and it’s all ‘that’s okay - you are what you are’ like it’s an acceptable excuse or something. But what I am is the child of killers, so… I am what I am, right?” She sneered at him. “I saw a photo of you that day at the farm house. You looked horrified. You didn’t want me - you and Dad just decided that I was your responsibility. I was safer in the care of two trained FBI agents than normal people. Christ, Pop, you gave up your job to keep an eye on me! You must have been really worried about what I’d turn into…”

“Stop… just STOP! That is complete and utter bullshit, Olivia! You haven’t got a damned clue of what you’re talking about.”

Pop never swore. Never. She shut the hell up and sat back as her stomach lurched and she swallowed it down with some effort. Pop took a Herculean slurp of scotch and then shook the hair out of his eyes to look at her.

“We chose you because I grew up alone and friendless and your Dad had to survive a father who beat him just because he existed, and when we finally found each other we didn’t know it was possible to love another person that much. But it didn’t stop with me and Dad. Once we figured out how to love, it was like trying to trap the ocean in a bottle - it just spilled out everywhere. You could say that we were making up for lost time. But all I know is that I found a baby in a burning building and she stole my heart before I learned her name. I didn’t care who she was or where she came from because if any of that really mattered, Dad would’ve grown up to be an abuser and I would’ve turned into a paranoid shut-in. All I wanted was to save that little girl from loneliness. I wanted to love someone else the way Dad loved me and I loved him - I had plenty left over. I cried when they took you from me, Liv - no one saw it but I did. It had only been three days. Dad saw that my heart was breaking. He knew what it felt like because he already had Jack. You can’t just… give up that kind of love. He knew that I was meant to be your Pop, so he made it happen.”

Pop leaned forward and weaved a little, but he was a serious as a heart attack when he spoke.

“So you don’t have a genius’s genes. So what? You’re probably better off that way. It doesn’t mean that you can’t apply yourself and be ferociously smart. I know you can, Liv. And who gives a rat’s ass if your biological parents were terrible people? You barely knew them and we are NOT merely the sum of our molecular parts. There’s tons of research on nature vs. nurture but it all comes down to nobody definitively knows why we turn out the way we do. Trust me, I’ve reeeeeaaaaally looked into it.”

He sagged back into the couch and hiccupped. “We chose you because we wanted you. Only you. Never in the history of lost children and lonely grown-ups has a child been wanted more than you, Olivia.”

“Pop,” she muttered, devastated that she’d hurt him and also devastated that he’d been so unwanted for so long. Because he was a great man - a hero. Both of her dads were great, and if she had one, impossible wish it was to actually be their daughter, like Jack was a part of Dad. But that couldn’t be no matter how much she wished. But, what could be was… if they started out where they had and still achieved greatness, couldn’t she do that too?

“Sweetheart, I’m sorry if I’m weird and overprotective, and I’m sorry that the beginning of your life was so horrible. But you are beautiful. Like a star-falling-from-the-sky-just-for-me beautiful. But, you know… without the whole burning gases and deadly space debris to negotiate.”

“Pop…” she rolled her eyes and tried to hide how he’d softened her up. How could he be such a dreamer and so literal simultaneously?

“I’ll always love you, Olivia, no matter what. But it would sure be nice if you stopped trying to give me and Dad reasons not to.”

That was pretty much the end of her teenaged stoicism. And the booze probably hadn’t helped either. She sobbed and then flung herself awkwardly across to the couch to him. She only half made it and he caught her and tried lifting her the rest of the way for a hug. But it all ended in a tangle of limbs and tears. “Pop… I’m sorry. I’m sorrysorrysorrysorry…”

“It’s okay, Tiger,” his voice was watery as he clutched her too tightly. “We’ll figure this out. Everyone screws up. Everyone.”

She clung to him like she hadn’t since she was little when she woke up crying in the dark and he chased everything bad away with just his words and a flashlight. Like a hero. God, there had to be a way to be like him and Dad…

“For example,” he mumbled. “When Dad finds out that I got you drunk he’s going to explain to me in excruciating detail just how much I screwed up.”

“Technically, I was drunk before that,” she muffled into his shirt as she tried to wipe her nose.

“We’ll leave that bit out.”

And he did, and Dad was angry, and there was an exhaustive search for a new school, but in the end it all passed, just like Pop promised it would. She tried harder, took on a little of Pop’s seriousness, and made a success of school with a lot of work. Pop cheered her on quietly, pride shining through even when she came home with Bs instead of the As he knew she was capable of. His only criticism was a gentle “Is that all you’ve got, Tiger?” and that was all she needed to get under her skin and drive her nuts. She’d show him. He had no idea what she was planning.

Once, when Jack came to visit her at college, he asked her why she studied so hard and she told him she did it because she was Pop’s heart. Jack just looked confused and dragged her out for shots, but she meant it: she was a hero’s heart and she’d be damned if she turned out to be any less impressive than that suggested. When she graduated top of her class with degrees in psychology and music theory from Yale, Pop asked, “Is that all you’ve got?” with a smile. When she got her Masters in psychology a few years later, he said “Is that all, Tiger?” When she started her own band and signed up for a doctoral program at the same time, his eyebrows rose but he asked the same question. Dad elbowed him and muttered “Quit asking her that - we’ll end up never seeing her again she’ll be so busy”.

Maybe Dad knew he was sick then, or maybe he was just trying to diffuse trouble like he always did. It would be something she would always wonder about.

She was just months away from defending her thesis the night Jack called and spent five minutes sobbing incoherently into the phone. She came home and found the house so empty, so quiet - not anything like the peaceful contentedness that it had when Dad was around. It scared her. Dad had always been a quiet man, but now his absence was deafening.

Pop stared into space, only coming back to earth when either she or Jack spoke up. Jennifer and Penelope and Emily all tried, even Derek and Hank came by to rouse him, but it was just temporary. Pop slid away as soon as they stopped watching him. Olivia wondered if any of them really knew what Dad had meant to him all that time; she wondered if now she was the only other person who knew. She flopped down on the couch next to him, waiting for his smile that flared and then dimmed just as quickly, and suddenly the idea that she’d lose him too became this ungovernable, clawing panic. She hadn’t been done with Dad but he was gone; now she was keenly aware that she wasn’t done with Pop either. How could she know who she was without their eyes telling her so? Who would she become without that security? She thread her fingers through his and just leaned into the hero she was trying to save.

“Is this all you’ve got, Pop?”

She felt him turn slowly to face her.

“It’s okay if… that’s it,” she choked and then stared at him, his face blurring while she blinked ferociously. “I mean, I understand. He… he taught you how to love and now… I get it if your heart is just gone now.”

I can live without you, I think, if you have to go too. Maybe. I dunno…

“Ohhhhhh, Tiger,” he whispered after an almost interminable silence, and then cupped her cheek. “My heart isn’t gone - you’re still here.”

“Pop…” she sobbed and pulled him against her until it hurt. “How do we… how… oh, Daddy…”

She hitched into his sweater and felt five years old all over again. Then she realized that he was hitching too, damp splotches suddenly spotting the front of her blouse and dripping into her dark hair.

“We’ll figure it out, Tiger,” he cried, and she had a feeling by the sudden nature of the quiet around them that everyone was watching. “All we need is time and we’ll figure it out… I promise.”

Ten months later they stood at Dad’s grave dressed in their finest. She had her brand new doctorate under her arm (because she wanted to show it to Dad) and Pop was pouring champagne into tiny plastic wine glasses. He handed one to her with a smile.

“Congratulations, Dr. Reid,” he grinned, the pride beaming more brightly than she could have imagined.

“Thank you, Dr. Reid,” she grinned back and clinked his plastic cup. Then she turned to the grave. “Look, Dad, two know-it-alls and we’re gonna get drunk as skunks while you watch.”

Pop laughed softly. “I can hear him arching an eyebrow in judgment now.”

“Did you ever tell him that we got drunk together after I got expelled from school?”

He shook his head, no, and then made an exaggerated gesture towards the headstone. “But I guess he knows now, doesn’t he?”

“Pop…” she rolled her eyes. “I know you don’t believe in the afterlife.”

“There’s no proof one way or the other. When it comes to your Dad, I’d prefer to err on the side of caution. If anyone could come back just to give someone a good scowl, it would be him.” Pop drained his tiny glass and refilled it. She waited for it - she could feel it coming in the air…

“So, Tiger, is that all you’ve got?” he smirked, wind suddenly picking up and swirling his grey hair all over the place.

“Yeeeeessss!” Olivia fist pumped, causing Pop to push his glasses further up his nose as if that would help him figure her out. “I’m soooooo glad you asked that because, YES, POP, that’s all I’ve got. For now anyway.”

“I’m not sure why you’re so excited about that…”

“I’m excited because… I’ve lived up to you. You and Dad. I’m smart and capable and I became more than the sum of my molecular parts.” She sighed, still amused by his confusion. “Now I’m ready to start the next bit. I’m gonna go out there with this damned doctorate and help people, as many as I can. I’m gonna take everything you and Dad tried to show me and give it away to others. No stuffing the ocean back into a bottle.”

His brilliant, blinding smile returned slowly and it seemed to her that he blushed as well. “That would make Dad and me very happy,” he said quietly.

“Good.” She rolled up onto her feet and grinned, like he would. She couldn’t help it. Now she knew all of the competing theories behind nature vs. nurture, but it still felt like instinct because she was this man’s heart. “Now, hold onto that thought because you might not be so happy about the next part…”

He lifted his eyebrows and waited. “Got job offers already?”

“Yep.”

“Well… tell me about them…”

She took in a deep breath. “There’s a lot of the expected stuff: research positions, teaching posts, things to do with music therapy and the like… but there’s one that I’m really hoping to get.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And I got an interview, Pop.” She bounced in a way that probably wasn’t okay for a PhD grad to exhibit.

“That’s great, Liv! Where is it? Maybe I know someone-”

“Oh, trust me, you do.”

Pop stopped and gave her the same sort of look he did when he was trying to decide if she’d actually brushed her teeth or not as a kid. “Well, just so long as it’s not the Bureau…”

“Ummm, well…”

His smile collapsed. “Olivia Reid, tell me that you haven’t applied to the FBI.”

“Aunt Emily got me an interview with the chief at Behavioral Analysis.” She looked down at her feet and then forced herself to look up at him. She was proud of this, no matter what he thought. She hoped that Dad would’ve been proud too. “They’re really eager to meet ‘Dr. Reid’…”

“I bet they are,” he muttered darkly and put his glass down on Dad’s headstone.

“Pop, don’t. This has always been my plan since the day I got expelled from high school. Don’t be mad.”

He seemed… stunned. “It has? Why?”

“Because that day I decided that if you and Dad could do everything that you did coming from the backgrounds you both had, then I could do it too. To me it wasn’t an abstract idea anymore. You could’ve gone into research, Dad could’ve stayed a lawyer, and you might have helped a lot of people that way, from a distance. But you both chose differently. You chose to actively save people - you became heroes when no one expected it of you, and I decided that’s what I wanted too.”

“But honey, the job…” he sighed and looked frighteningly old all of a sudden. “It asks a lot of you. And it takes more than it asks. You have no idea.”

“Pop, if you hadn’t done the job, I might not even exist.” She let that blow around them with the wind and the swirling November leaves. He looked away from her and leaned against Dad’s headstone like he was calling out for him, for his ability to make things okay. “Look at me, Pop. Look at what I’ve become. All because you chose to act and you didn’t let apathy drain that incredible love from you.”

His nails gripped into the granite right above Dad’s name. “And because he gave you to me. He said it was a selfish act - he said I’d love him forever for it, and I did. I do.”

She grabbed his arm and felt its wiriness under his thick peacoat. He wasn’t so old, he still had things to give. She still needed him. “Pop, I want this. I want it so much. Can’t you see? It started out being about you and Dad, but now it’s about me. I can only be me because of what you two did, and I can’t turn away from the possibility that there’s another Olivia out there waiting for me to jump into a burning building for her.”

“Christ,” Pop gritted out painfully as he pulled her close and held her far too tightly. “I hope not. No burning buildings. No being locked in rooms with murderous psychopaths. No dirty bombs with anthrax. No high-speed chases. No shootouts. No exploding helicopters…”

“Anthrax? Exploding helicopters? Pop… what?”

“Listen,” he ignored her questions entirely. “If this is what you really want, I won’t stop you. And at my age I probably couldn’t stop you even if I tried. But the only way that I’m not going to make this decision a living hell for you is if you agree to my one, unalterable, inviolable stipulation on the matter. I’m still your father - I still have some authority here…”

He was making her feel eleven again. Even with a doctorate. She pulled back and gave him a cautious stare. “Alright. What is it?”

“You tell me everything. Not a diluted version of events. Not a soft fiction to keep me from worrying. Everything. Because you’ll see and do things in that job that you simply can’t imagine now, and the only people who will understand are those who’ve been through it. I’ve been through it. When you tell me, I won’t be your father, I’ll be a retired agent, so damn well use me and the things I know.”

She swallowed and tried to pretend that she was a capable adult because her Pop was scaring her like she was a wide-eyed kid. The look on his face was fierce, and then she blinked and realized that she could see a hint of the young, skinny, horrified Pop who held her in the old AP photograph she still had buried away on a hard drive somewhere.

“Okay,” she murmured.

“Promise,” he demanded.

“I promise, Pop.”

“Well then,” he took a deep breath and stopped being ferocious. He rubbed her arms thoughtfully and pulled her until she slouched into his side. “We’ll get Emily to teach you how to shoot. She’s retired but she probably still has an unsuitable cache of weapons stashed away somewhere. And Jennifer and I can help you with the profiling manual - we still edit the new versions anyway…”

“Pop, they’ll teach me all of that in training.”

“They’ll teach you how to do it by the book.” He raised a finger at her. “I want you to know how to save your life with it. I had a mentor when I joined the Bureau but he didn’t bother teaching me the things that would save me. He didn’t see the point. But your Dad did, thank goodness. I will not allow the same shortfall to happen to you.”

She rolled her eyes and wondered if she’d get any sympathy from Dad if he were here. Probably not. Pop would always be overprotective and weird, and Dad would always remind her that he was that way out of inescapable love.

“Okay, Pop, I have a stipulation of my own.”

He peered at her over the rim of his glasses.

“If I have to tell you everything, and you’re gonna be my FBI rabbi or something, I want you to tell me everything about you and Dad at the Bureau. All the cases, everything that that happened to you guys. It’s only fair and I’ve been waiting almost twenty years to hear it.”

He was still for a long time in silence, the wind tugging them both. “That’s a very long story, sweetheart,” he said quietly.

“Well… we’ve got time, right?” He still had plenty to give, and she needed him to stay and be her partner in this. She sent out a silent thought to the wind around them: not yet, Dad, he’s still got work to do.

He smiled and it was the kind of smile that made her feel like he knew what she was trying to pull the whole time. “Okay, deal,” he said and cupped her cheek against the bitter wind. “Thank God your brother became a veterinarian. I don’t think I have enough energy to worry about the both of you.”

“So, can we start now?”

“Start what?”

“Pop, c’mon, we made a deal…”

“Okay,” he said, collecting their glasses and then tapping Dad’s headstone like it was code for ‘see you later’. Maybe he did believe a little after all.

She got down on her knees then and leaned into the headstone as she felt Pop back away to give her some privacy.

“So, that’s the plan, Dad. I wish you were here to see it but… Pop’s gonna have my back. You don’t need to worry. About either of us.” She swallowed down other things she wanted to say – the stuff she should’ve told him when he was alive – but she’d tell it all to Pop instead. That would have to be enough. Tears were threatening and she wasn’t going to ruin this by getting maudlin on him.

“Okay, Dad, gotta go. Talk to you later.” She leaned in, kissing the A of his name and quickly hummed a bar of While My Guitar Gently Weeps before popping back up and sweeping the hair from her face. She turned and gave Pop a watery smile and he gave her one back, brushing the back of his glove quickly along his cheek. Then they turned together and walked slowly back towards the car through the falling leaves.

“So, where should we start?” She slid her arm through his as they walked.

“It’s best to start at the beginning. It’ll be less confusing that way.” He sighed and then smiled as if it were all happening again right before his eyes. “My first day at the Bureau I was profoundly terrified. It also happened to be the first time I met your Dad, so I’m sure that made quite an impression. He was unbelievably serious, and intimidating, and… well, married and everything, and I came away with the feeling that he thought my FBI career, if not my life, would be a painfully brief one.”