Crying Lighting (Hotch x Reader)// ✔

15. Bad Apple

Summary:

After the BAU leaves Washington you have to go on with your normal life - until a friend reaches out to you for help.

Notes:

Hey all!!💕💕
Buckle up because there's a long one ahead! (with a whole-ass mini plot and everything!)

(and yes i wrote this at night like a gargoyle so if u see any weird grammar errors pls dont pay it any mind and take it with a grain of salt lmao)

in italics flashbacks!

(I leave you with a long one and part 2 of this will be something... 👀)

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We are the same.

You look at your reflection in the mirror – with your black gown and black gloves you're ready for tonight's event. It's out of pure necessity that you're back to the social life of rich and elite people. It's been two full weeks of attending galas, museum openings, exhibitions, operas, and everything else.

People have started talking to you differently, somehow knowing that you're the heiress of the Anderson fortune – treating you the same they did Nathan. They'd seemingly forgotten Nathan's disappearance, and his family's insistence that you were the murderer – even the embezzlement lawsuit. Now, through casual events and even wedding invitations that you'd started receiving in the post – in their eyes, you're officially an Anderson. More so than when you were married to Nathan. Funny how much money can buy.

Another reasoning for your attendance to these events is pure spite. Lucille Anderson expects you to cower away and stick around your house every day. And she'd certainly called in the name of Clover, sent newsletters as well – something they apparently did with investors to keep them in the loop of their latest developments. She wanted to kill you? Then let her do it amidst the public, sitting in the audience of an opera, or at a gala.

Even in a movie premiere – why not? You are not about to make it easy for her. No, if she wants to do it with her own bare hands – it's time she gets creative about it. The other thought-out reason was the crowd of paparazzi swarming these events. They'd made your life hell when you were dating Nathan and then married him. It had increased disproportionally once he's disappeared. There's no shying away from paparazzi and media this time.

However, this is a three-fold endeavor. Because if there's anything you know about the BAU is that they have an excellent technical analyst. And the more you appear on the media and internet searches – the more material Garcia had on you. And a part of you, the desperate one that had broken down when Hotch had left your house that day, wished for him to still be following you.

It is masochistic of you – to want the man investigating you to still be on the lookout for you.

You wave a hand at the police car in front of your house, tasked with your security and hand them the coffee cups you'd prepared.

"Where to, tonight?" George asks – he's the oldest, grey hair and moustache – taking his cup. He'd showed you photos of his kids and grandkids those first few days when you were bored out of your mind in the house.

"Let me guess –" Mathilde shoots from the driver's seat, "A charity gala?" She smiles in gratitude as she takes her latte.

You laugh, "Yes."