Note From The Author-- This is kind of monumental for me. If you haven't noticed, I don't really do case stories, and this is most definitely going to delve into that area, which is monumental for me. I just graduated with a Bachelor's degree, which is huge, so I decided to do something huge here to celebrate. I realize that members of the team are very often put in the line of fire on the show and in fanfiction, but considering what they do I think that makes sense. I hope you'll bear with me with this story; I'm a little unsure of what's going on. I know where I want to take it but the case factor makes me nervous. We'll see how this goes : )

Disclaimer-- I don't own the characters of Criminal Minds

A couple of months before, Emily had been deliriously happy. Two years before she had finally worked up the courage to tell Hotch how she felt, and had been elated to discover that he felt the same. Since then her life had been dramatically different, in the best way possible. They had been together for close to a year when he proposed, and later when she found out she was pregnant she couldn't wait to tell him. It wouldn't ever happen; the day after she found out that she was carrying their first child, Hotch disappeared.

The Bureau wrote it off, assuming that he had gone of his own volition. There was no evidence to the contrary; no sign of a struggle anywhere in their home, no blood, no ransom note, no body or contact from kidnappers. His team knew better that there was no way he would leave Emily and Jack behind so easily, nor would he have left his friends and the job he loved. So while the higher ups walked away, the team did their own work to try and bring him home.

But eventually Emily lost hope. Maybe it had been when the baby kicked for the first time and she was all alone. Maybe it was when they showed her the picture that told her she would have a son, and it was JJ holding her hand rather than the man she loved. Hope died, it didn't really matter when; and at seven months pregnant, after Aaron had been gone for over five months, Emily asked them to stop looking. With tears in her eyes and her hands resting protectively over her belly, she verbally accepted the fact that she would never get him back; and she felt her heart shatter.