Classified light- a criminal minds fan fiction

'Perfect' explanations

The case grew on throughout the week and the team's questions for Cameron remained unanswered, as did any attempt to talk to her for longer than 5 minutes it seemed.

She was everywhere and nowhere at once.

Running through the station every other minute on some kind of phone call back to the back office as she signed off plans presented to her and wrote up evidence and profiles that the team forgot to jot down like she knew they always did and then would forget in their own reports.

Cameron used to be fine quickly adding in the extra details into their reports for them, cleaning up their wording and most of the time just re-writing it and doing their jobs to make it easier for them to do the 'hard' part of the job of saving peoples lives.

She used to be fine with that before she knew how much it had actually saved the teams jobs without them realising, before she had all of these other jobs to balance and no time to be cleaning up their lazy mistakes that she didn't get as much as a 'thank you' for.

She thought it was selfish to want someone to acknowledge things like this, to thank her, to appreciate her outwardly- but with the sleep deprivation of the last week on the case as well as all of the constant phone calls and running about to sort things she barely knew the name of out, she couldn't help her frustration.

Especially with their endless questions, of which she knew were semi-reasoned- she did disappear of the trace of the earth from them for 7 months and then suddenly came back as their boss despite her 0 real qualifications.

Cameron largly managed to avoid the series of 'can we talk?' and 'can you just explain this to us...'  by drip feeding them just enough to hopefully satisfy them as she juggled everything.

"I was with Carlos for most of the 7 months on the run"

"I didn't see him, he didn't catch me"

"I'm back because it's safe to be back now"

Simple answers in-between phone calls when someone, usually Hotch or Morgan, managed to corner her in a file room before she was on another call and emailing Cruz to grant Garcia more funding for this case or which was quickly becoming a thorn in her side.

Not because it was a hard case, but because she didn't realise how hard it would be to manage her friends and get them to respect her enough to think of her as their boss.

One person in particular seemed to have trouble with this.

One person who found himself forgetting that he wasn't her boss anymore.

One person who was frustrated with the lack of explanations of everything that he fell back into the old power balance.

Hotch had tried to talk to Cameron multiple times, multiple ways- even going to her hotel room one night in a frustrated anger with the hopes of any kind of conversation to get some answers but she wasn't there.

He panicked before finding her at the station passed out, asleep with her head on the table where stacks of files and reports sat- not the ones she was used to but the ones the higher ups had to write and lie in to avoid the governments questions or lawsuits, the ones that Hotch knew how to write all too well. The ones he could just about see that she was struggling with which wasn't usual for Cameron to struggle with reports.

Except he knew these weren't reports.

These were all just lies, white collar lies written to appease higher ups and do things 'by the book' when it was just to cover scandals, scams and mistakes that the FBI had to protect themselves from.