𝑗𝑢𝑛𝑜, 𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑠

chapter one.

Having a child had never been something that Juno Hotchner thought about, even as a child she never played with baby dolls, picking skeletons toys over them. She picked surgical toys, choosing to dissect her toys, something her older brothers always found strange. Aaron said she was on the way to becoming a serial killer when she was ten and started dissecting small animals in their backyard. He never told their dad though, not wanting to invoke the man's wrath. 

The three Hotchner siblings didn't have the best luck when it came to their parents. Juno didn't even remember what it was like to have a mother, she was three years old and her mom was pushing her on the swings and then she blinked and the woman was gone. She was the lucky one, she didn't have to stay with their father any longer. She didn't have to walk around trying to explain the random bruises on her body, she didn't have to cry herself to sleep every night. 

Juno was eight when she realized she was being abused, when she went to school one day and the thought of going back home made her burst into tears. Her brother had to pick her up, explain to the school that she just had a bad day. By that stage in her life, Aaron Hothcner was gone, off to university. It was just her and Sean, he protected her as best as any sixteen year old could but two years later and he was gone too. 

She was ten and she was all alone with his wrath. Not a day went by that he didn't scream at her, not a day went by that she wasn't a victim of his rage. His hands had left countless bruises on her by then, scars that she had no way of explaining to teachers and friends. 

When she turned twelve, she went to school with a bloody eye and no one even blinked. She could have been screaming for help and it was like no one heard. 

When she was sixteen, Juno stopped growing. She stood at four foot, eleven inches and her father was roughly above six feet tall. She didn't stand a chance against him, she couldn't fight even if she wanted to until one day she saw a way to escape. It envolved a stolen gun, a single bullet and one lucky shot and he was on the ground. 

That image would haunt her for the rest of her life, all she could do now was live with it. Every second of every day. 

Even now as she sat on the carpeted floors, her nephew sat in front of her as the two had a very one sided conversation. It wasn't his fault that he didn't really know how to talk, or walk, he was barely a year old but that didn't stop her from giving him advice. "So when he tells you that all his exes are crazy; that's a sign." She poured him a cup of tea, with the pink plastic kettle in her hands as she filled his cup with juice but he didn't know the difference, "There's a pattern to that," The boy just cooed to what she said. 

"That's what your daddy does at the BAU; he looks at the patterns which is something girls learn to do when they're, like, twelve." She rolled her eyes, smiling at him as he took a sip of his juice. 

He was holding it up all by himself and Juno put down her own cup, gasping as she placed her hands on her face, "Look at you, Bunny." She reached her right hand onto the couch, picking up her camera. She moved her left hand on the camera, finger hovering over the small circular button as she snapped the picture. 

"Mommy's gonna want to see this," She waited for the picture to come out at the top, shaking it in her hand as she put the camera back down before she placed her hand on his cheek. He giggled at that, making her smile even brighter. 

"It's like the universe pressed Ctrl C on Haley and you just spawned," She took a sip of her juice, watching as Jack started waving his arms around, juice flying everywhere as the young babysitter let out a fit of giggles before she took the cup from her nephew as she got up, plucking him up from the ground. 

"Bunny, why did you have to do that?" She shifted her right foot, holding the boy up on her hip as she stared down at the juice he had spilled at her feet. It could have been worse, he could have gotten it on the carpet or even the couch.