No-one had seen Annabel Bradey in a decade, that was until she resurfaced in SSA Aaron Hotchner's office in Quantico. She was carrying scars both physical and mental, but wouldn't share her story. Or at least not until everyone she loved was in dang...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Aaron Hotchner had spent almost an hour reassuring Annie that no words she spoke that night would change the way he looked at her. Since their earlier conversation, he had been expecting to hear the worst about how she had been treated and how she had lived. Aaron had expected to feel helpless as he listened to her - detailing her past abuse and mistreatment – but he knew that no words she could say could make him hate her. In the last few months, he had realised that he had been falling deeply for the woman since they had first met, she simply seemed unattainable, and Haley was once as in love with him as he was Annie.
Annie had poured herself a mug of coffee from the pot, joining Aaron at the kitchen table as she waited for him to guide her candour. He wasn't going to; he wanted this moment to be as far from an interrogation as possible. The following day was going to be hell for Annie, and he didn't want this to be as well. He wanted her to tell him on her own terms.
She took a calming breath – though it shook through her chest she knew it was the only things stopping her from crumbling. He would hate her, the moment he learnt the ecstasy she had experienced when Gabriel had set his sights on her. There was much that she hadn't fought in the beginning; she had seen his evil and his manipulative smirk, but she still stayed. Lifetimes could pass and she would still regret letting him shape her nightmares into dreamcatchers and hand them back to her.
"He convinced me he loved me." She began, the words being no shock to Aaron who had seen the photos of the church. He knew her too well to think that the admiration in her eyes was fake. "When he found me, I was in a bad way; I was drunk and rambling at a stranger in the bar. I remember I was cursing God, that's what caught his attention, I think.
"He took the seat beside me and got me some water. He seemed kind enough, and I accepted." Annie was struggling to keep a smile off her face as she remembered that first moment, she could remember all too well how she felt in that moment. "He started asking me why I'd decided that if God exists God is evil. I remember trying to stay vague – I'd lost a lot of people before their time – but before long I'd told him specifics."
Aaron took her hand across the table, knowing that she rarely spoke about Maya and her parents at that time. It had always caused her too much of an ache. She'd always known how to miss them, but she hadn't known how to move on from their demise for the years after.
"It was only a couple of weeks before I joined the church." Her eyes had pulled away from Aaron, knowing that now he would be aware of how her time had been spent in the weeks before his wedding. She had claimed that she was busy with work, but instead she was busy with Gabriel. "He explained that everyone there had lost people, that they could all blame God if they wanted but it was like screaming at a wall. It made so much sense back then, but now I see that he just knew what I needed to hear."
Aaron shifted his weight in the seat, the only sound for a moment being the creaking of the old wood. Reaching for her hand across the table, he muttered, "We can take a break if you want, Annie, we don't have to rehash it all at once."
"No, I need to get it all out."
Over the last few hours, Annie had told him of the pure ecstasy she had felt when Gabriel had first brough her to the compound. To have been wanted by someone who claimed to have known her pain was more than she ever could have asked for at that time; Gabriel had been aware of just that. Aaron could see how she missed her naivety; hindsight having made her realise that his words had only been used to manipulate her. The man who had convinced the broken girl that she could be loved had never once said anything without carefully picking his words.
Aaron knew that soon the nature of the memories would change; she had already told him that the man had snapped during her time there. However, so far, all that she had spoken of had been the ways Gabriel had tried to fix her pain. As she explained the way she had been feeling, the agent had become all too aware of how much Annie had been hiding from him when she had left. Of course, he couldn't entirely blame her, he had been rather caught up in planning for his wedding with Haley. Yet he still became filled with the overwhelming idea that – should he have listened more and known what was going through her head – Annie never would have fallen into Gabriel's arms.
"He would baptise us, regularly, or at least that's what he called it." Annie's shoulders had tensed as she remembered the years she had spent fighting for breath while her lungs filled with acid. "It wasn't a baptism; he would put our heads in the water and hold us until we couldn't fight it anymore. The more you fought the more he'd do it, because if you were fighting then you were in more need of being cleansed."
Aaron placed his hand on her leg, his expression radiating the comfort he so desired to share, "How many times?"
"I lost count." She muttered. "I've done a lot of research on drowning since then. Like the CPR doll was modelled after a woman who drowned, she could have been saved if people had known CPR. Drowning deaths are a lot more common than you think."
"It's normal to want to understand what happened to you." Aaron explained. "Whether it be wanting to understand why, or what could have come of it."
"I was initially trying to find out if it could have been the baptism's that had caused Elisha to have the seizures, and it could have been if she was unconscious and without oxygen to her brain for too long." There was a heart-breaking melancholy in Annie's voice as she discussed her daughter, not knowing when or if she would be able to see the other again. "However, then I wanted to understand the science of drowning more, I wanted to know why it was so difficult to give in despite knowing that the quicker I did the quicker it's over. I found out that it is really common when drowning not to inhale until right before you black out. It's called voluntary apnea. It's like no matter how terrified you are, the instinct to not let any water in is so strong that you won't open your mouth until you feel like your head's exploding. But then when you finally do let it in, that's when it stops hurting. It's not scary anymore. It's - it's actually kind of peaceful."
Shaking his head, her partner took a deep breath, "He did this to everyone?"
"Anyone he believed to be unclean at any point." She pulled her eyes away from Aaron for a moment. "I did it a couple of times. Not to the point that people blacked out, I couldn't watch them struggle. That was when he first hit me, I couldn't stomach the thought of causing that damage to another human being and he lost his temper. He thought that I was defying God's plan for us to lead the church, which I guess from his eyes wasn't far from the truth. If that was what was meant by us leading, I didn't want to be a part of it."
Aaron didn't want to touch her, not because he had become ashamed of her but because he didn't want to see her flinch from his touch. He had seen it before – when victims were describing the abuse they had suffered and pulled away from those that were only trying to support them – and he didn't want her to associate his contact with Gabriel's. Yet, watching her face become tainted by the memories of that man's manipulation, Aaron wanted to do anything he could to reassure her. There were many broken and fractured parts of Annie threatening to come loose that evening, all he wanted was to hold her so tightly that they were forced back into place.
Yet, before he could say anything to support her, the home phone began to ring. It was late and Annie assumed that it was Jessica calling to make sure everyone was okay after the case, so without hesitation or thought she crossed the room and took hold of the device.
"May I speak to Miss Annie Hotchner?" The voice on the other end of the phone echoed through Annie's ears, her mouth becoming dry with fear instantly. "I take it this is the same Annie Hotchner that spoke at the press conference tonight. I must say, blonde did suit you, my Mary."
