A/N: This is a very vague AU that starts sometime after the tenth season.

The day Hotch gets fired, his world stops spinning for one brief, horrible moment.

He's listening to the words of the director and his mind isn't really comprehending them.

He'd known, for a while now, that they'd been hoping to get rid of him. He has too much baggage; Gideon, Foyet, and now Peter Lewis. He's made too many questionable decisions—Prentiss will always come back to haunt him.

But he hadn't thought they'd come up with such a stupid reason, with such an inane trap.

Because it was a big regulation he'd broken, but consequences for this particular rule had never been severe. It was an unspoken rule around the Bureau that agents didn't get in trouble for things done under intense circumstances; it wasn't even a particularly troublesome case. They'd flown out, they'd gotten the UnSub and made the arrest.

And then the team had finished all necessary files, they'd sent them in, and not even a week later, Hotch was called into the Director's office to be told he'd been let go.

The team doesn't understand the decision; he sees the utter shock on JJ's face, how Rossi's eyebrows raise, and Garcia grabs for a chair back; the BAU isn't the BAU without Hotch in it.

He sees Morgan take a step, fists balled; he sees Callahan's eyes widen in unsurety and then he looks for the face he's most worried about.

Reid's.

Reid is still sitting at his desk, the only one who didn't stand.

Reid is reading, or so he appears to be.

Hotch can tell better.

The younger agent's hands are holding the book so tightly and his eyes don't move to scan the pages; he hasn't made a single page turn for a good three minutes, and Hotch can see the tension everywhere on Reid's body.

He wants to talk to Reid. He wants to talk to Reid one-on-one, tell him it's fine, tell him they'll get past this, tell him that he's not leaving him like Gideon did.

He's not. For one, he doesn't even want to go.

For two, he'd never do that.

For three, he wants to come back.

He intends with every fiber of his being to come back.

The FBI was always water that was teeming with sharks.

Hotch had always been able to steer them away from the BAU, at least a little. He'd always been able to protect his team.

Not anymore.

He's told to pack up his office and leave that day.

He's told that the U.S. Marshalls will look into finding a new identity for him, to keep him safe from Lewis after he'll no longer be able to do that himself.

Hotch breathes in deep, takes apart his office, and goes home.

He's not allowed to have contact with the BAU anymore.

They aren't allowed to have contact with him.

This lasts six months.

It's a position he thought he'd never be in again, but he's watching the news and he hears Reid's name.

"Dr. Spencer Reid of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit has been arrested…"

He turns the volume up, pulls out his tablet, starts to google frantically.

It's only a few minutes before his phone lights up with a text.

It's Rossi.

Hotch doesn't even think about how Rossi obtained this number; it's not a hard thing to profile. Once one of their own was in danger, Garcia wouldn't hesitate to do any number of illegal things, red tape or not.

Save him, Aaron.

He doesn't even think about the fact that no one has called him by that name for six long months.

Instead, he acts.

It's a position he never thought he'd be in again, but he's again faking someone's death: a teammate's death.

He's again breaking his team's hearts, but this time they'll know the truth. Eventually.

The van transporting Reid blows out a tire; it tumbles over a cliff.

The driver is killed instantly when the van goes up in flames; the flames that are so hot they make the human bodies inside unidentifiable.

Nearly unidentifiable.

Hotch doesn't care.

All he knows is that he's holding Reid in his arms, and Reid doesn't know what to make of this.

All he knows is that Reid is back with him and neither of them are safe and they've got plane tickets to Paris.

They're now fugitives.

Hotch doesn't expect they'll ever return to U.S. soil.

But it doesn't matter. They have friends abroad; Prentiss will do everything in her power to make sure they never get caught and he knows she has a hell of a lot of power.

Paris.

He knows it's ironic that they're going to Paris; that that was where JJ had once taken Emily. How the circumstances were the same, but different.

So completely different.

Reid doesn't question any of Hotch's actions. He lets him lead.

God, it's good to be a leader again.

A/N: Truly not sure where this came from; I haven't seen any of the twelfth season but I do know that this isn't how it goes. I know that Hotch goes into witness protection and that Reid is in jail for killing someone in...Mexico?

But it came from falling back into the show, from being fired myself from a very beloved job, and from losing all sense of identity for at least a day. From being totally adrift. From realizing how Thomas Gibson must have felt last Fall; that such a small mistake would cost him so very much. That he'd lose everything in the space of a week.

I'm waiting tables now. I never thought I'd have that job.

And it came from binge reading pretty much all of clemonlime's stories here on ff net. And from having The Chainsmoker's Paris on repeat while I drove this afternoon. And I just added words and stirred.

This probably doesn't make much sense, but it's the first time in months that words have come so easily for me. I just sat down and let my fingers move and it felt so, so good.