Shadows And Light・A.H.・

The Past

Aaron was not sure how to label how he was feeling as he carefully sped toward the jet. He could identify the pieces of it. Break it down into parts that did not equal the whole. He was disappointed that his evening with Tor was interrupted. He felt concerned about the case they had been called in for even though it had been running for six months. He felt the familiar adrenaline course through his veins as they neared the tarmac.

He felt sad that this might be the last time he would fly out with the team.

Aaron knew he should be feeling gratitude for the promotion. And he was. It was an answer to prayers he had stopped praying years ago, and the solution to at least half of his problems. Yet, with that gratitude came grief. For the first time in his career with the FBI, Aaron would no longer be a field agent. He would no longer be in the thick of things, working with his team to catch the monsters he had dedicated his life to hunting. He would no longer see Tor while she was on a case. Instead he would have to settle for late-night phone calls stolen between breaks in the case and updates from Morgan that would refer to her as an agent, not as Aaron's partner.

He had never been the one to stay behind before. He wasn't sure if he knew how to.

"You okay?" Tor asked with concern.

"I'm fine," he promised, giving her a flash of a smile before he had to turn his eyes back to the road. If he allowed himself any more time than that to look at her, there was a substantial chance he would pull the car over.

"It's the arsonist case, right?" she confirmed.

"Yes. They hit three deaths today, so it's a serial."

"LA sure took their sweet time, didn't they?" she grumbled. "There were eight casualties, and we told them weeks ago the unsub would escalate to homicides."

"LA thought they could handle it."

Tor made a face.

"What?" he asked with a chuckle.

"Nothing."

"Come on, tell me," he insisted, pressing the brake down as they reached a red light. "That is the second time you've reacted to me mentioning LA."

She scowled again.

"Are you worried about going back to your first field office?" he asked gently. "I know you left there pretty quickly-"

"It's not that," she said, pulling her seatbelt back on. "I mean, yeah, Eppes was pissed, but I blamed the whole thing on Strauss, so it's not like he'll be mad at me if we see him."

"Then what?" Aaron prompted.

She shifted in her seat, her eyes avoiding his.

"I was a different person out in LA," she explained slowly. "CNU was a whole 'nother world, especially when I was just a junior agent. I was the first woman to join the team in five years, and the youngest agent by ten.

The light cast a green hue over her skin.

He pulled out into the intersection.

"Eppes is a good unit leader, but he couldn't convince everyone else on the team that I was anything more than a skirt with a gun," she continued. "Most of the guys thought I was only there to take lunch orders or be hit on."

Aaron frowned deeply. He remembered Seattle CNU as being almost all men, but that had been a decade ago. He was not optimistic enough to believe the world had gotten better since then, but he was protective enough to hope Tor had not been forced to deal with any more patriarchal bullshit.

"So, I made a name for myself. I figured out what parts of me they would respect and I played them up. I figured out what made them attracted to me, and I burned it down. I basically made myself menopausal at twenty-six so they would stop flirting with me and let me do my job."