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the-guilty-writer · 1 year

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Damaged

Agent Rossi-Reid

Anthology Masterlist

David Rossi x daughter!reader, Criminal minds x BAU!reader

Summary: After twenty years, Rossi-Reid learns why her father stopped putting up the Christmas Tree.

A/N: This is basically a rewrite of S3E14 “Damaged”. I wanted to include it since it’s such an important part of Rossi’s arc and other significant events (even if only snippets are shown) happen during this episode.

CW: So many Rossi-Reid feelings, Hotch getting a divorce, regular crminal minds violence, talks about santa not being real

---

“Spencer!” you called. “You’re going to be late!” You packed a snack in a small tupperware container and stuck it in his satchel.

He walked out of the bedroom, tucking in his shirt and striding forward at the same time. You looked over at him and made a face. “What?” he asked. “Is it my hair? I was thinking it looked a little long this morning-”

“It’s not your hair, Spence.” You smiled. “Your hair is wonderful as always. It’s just, you and Hotch are going to do that interview tomorrow at the prison.”

Spencer grabbed his satchel and put the strap over his shoulder. “When you say it like that it sounds like we’re competing to see who gets to be the last inmate at a luxury detention facility. They’d pick me off my hairstyle alone.”

You couldn’t help but giggle just a bit. Spencer had recently acquired a rather new-found confidence and you loved it. “You’re wearing a tie,” you said.

“I wear ties all the time,” he retorted.

“Yes, but you’re going to be in a room with a killer and I’d rather not get a call that you were strangled,” you admitted.

Spencer knew that even though your tone was joking, you were actually rather serious. Behind your humorous exterior you harbored fear. As you turned from unlocking the apartment door to walk him out, he took you by the waist and pulled you into a kiss.

The older the two of your got and the longer you were married the more your kisses had evolved, and the more you understood what each type of kiss ment: there were the soft ones that lingered before you went to sleep or before the two of you parted which was a simple and strong “I love you”. There were the feather-light ones used for teasing and deep, all consuming ones for passion. There were ones on foreheads and knuckles for comfort and rare pecks on cheeks in public just to show you were marito and moglie- staking your claim on one another for the world to see. But recently you and Spencer had developed a new type of kiss- one that was deep and full, that caused a feeling to spread through your whole body as if you were being engulfed in Spencer while the rest of the world just faded away. It was different than a kiss of devouring lust or everlasting love- it was a kiss that knitted the fabric of your souls together for a few sweet seconds of eternity.

This new kiss was by far your favorite, and it seemed to be Spencer’s too.

“You’re going to be late,” you whispered.

Spencer purposefully tilted his head so his nose touched yours ever so slightly. The intimacy of delicate touches drove you crazy and he knew it.

“I should probably get going then,” he murmured.

“You probably should.”

You had to be the one to pull away, taking Spencer’s hand from your hip to intertwine it with your own. The two of you would hold hands until you exited the apartment building, and then you’d have to let go and wave goodbye to him as he climbed into the passenger seat of the SUV with Hotch.

Delicacy would have to wait.

---

You weren’t used to sleeping alone. With Spencer’s absence you found yourself seeking companionship and headed to work particularly early only to find yourself in an empty bullpen for the majority of the morning.

Growing up, your house had always been rather empty and lonely, and something about your Italian heritage made you long to go back to your grandparents' home country to live in a family house full of aunts and uncles and cousins. You wished for a house that was loud and never stopped moving. You wished for a family that never left you alone. Then you got old enough that your dad could bring you to the BAU after school and on weekends that he had to work. Suddenly you had everything you wished for- aunts that baked you cookies and scolded you for running in the halls, uncles that paid you a quarter to bring their reports to other departments so they didn’t have to, and eventually a brother; the young agent Hotchner who was trying to get on your dad’s good side. The BAU was the only true home had ever known, and you couldn’t stand to feel like your home was empty.

That’s how you ended up in JJ’s office that morning, sitting in the corner chair working on files while she went through her own manila folders. At some point, Garcia burst into the office and began to pace, but you didn’t really pay attention to what she was saying until you heard your own name.

“-Rossi showed up at my door in the middle of the night while I was enjoying a post-coital shower with fellow FBI technical analyst Kevin Lynch?”

You and JJ both looked up at Garcia, and then at one another.

“Sit,” JJ said to Garcia. You put your work on the chair and went to perch on the corner of JJ’s desk. You weren’t sure what was more intriguing about the whole thing- the fact that Garcia was in the shower with some guy, or that your dad had shown up at her apartment in the middle of the night.

No, you were definitely more interested in the guy.

“I need your help.” Garcia looked between the two of you.

“With what?” JJ asked.

“Agent Rossi,” Garcia said, concerned. “We're not supposed to date fellow bureau employees.”

“From what I hear, Rossi is the reason most of these fraternization rules even exist, okay?” JJ said.

“Oh, he is,” you confirmed with a smirk. “And it’s not like they even enforce those rules… I mean, Spencer and I got married and both of us still work here.”

“He's not gonna tell anyone,” JJ tried to ease Garcia’s nerves. “Just relax.”

“What was my dad doing at your apartment?” you inquired as casually as possible, hoping Garcia would spill.

“That's a good-” Garcia stopped herself. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”

Now you were even more curious.

“Why?” JJ drew out the word.

“I didn’t press the issue,” Garcia answered.

You tuned out JJ and Garcia’s voices, thinking about what your dad could possibly be hiding when another familiar name caught your attention.

“Mrs. Hotchner,” JJ answered the phone.

Your heart sank in your chest- Haley had been a big part of your life for a long time. Her and Hotch were newlyweds when you met them- all young and googly eyed and disgustingly in love. Back then, the BAU had also been quite the boys club, and Haley had taken you under her wing. You finally had someone that could teach you about clothes and make-up and boys. She was the first real consistent female figure in your life.

But despite your efforts to contact her, she hadn’t gotten back to you since she served Hotch with divorce papers.

“Well, that- that would make sense because he's in a prison right now, so sometimes cell service can be…” JJ trailed off and you tried not to overhear the angry words on the other end of the phone. “Oh, yeah- well if-yeah, if I can get ahold of him I'll… okay.” JJ hung up the phone. “That is one seriously pissed-off lady.”

You didn’t want to imagine Haley angry- she’d always been such a caring and understanding person, and selfishly, that’s how you wanted to keep seeing her. Once again, you tuned out the conversation and went back to your paperwork, but now your mind was flooded with questions and anxieties. You doubted you’d get any paperwork done now.

JJ got on the phone and Garcia left the office. You looked down at the files and wished that Spencer was there. It wouldn’t have taken much for him to make you feel better- just a small brush of hands or shoulders, maybe a few badly spoken Italian words- but he wasn’t there. As soon as JJ hung up the phone she looked over to you. “Are you okay?”

“Am I really that easy to read?” you asked.

JJ sighed. “No, but Hotch is getting divorced and I know you were close to Haley. You’re Jack’s godmother. On top of that your dad apparently has some massive secret that he’s been recruiting Garcia to help him with. I’d be feeling a little sad right now if I were you.”

You shrugged. “I’m not all that worried about my dad to be honest,” you admitted. “And I guess if Haley only had me in her life because of Hotch... then she was never really my friend in the first place.”

JJ didn’t have time to respond because Prentiss opened the door without knocking. Her eyes expressed concern and she spoke quickly. “You guys should come see this.”

“You go,” you told JJ. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Emily and JJ left you alone in her office. You picked up your phone and scrolled through your contacts, looking for Haley’s number. You weren’t sure what you were going to do. You weren’t going to call her- she never picked up anymore. Every text you’d sent had gotten no reply. There wasn’t anyone there to tell you what to do… except for you.

Your dad would have scolded you for being too involved, Spencer would have just taken your phone and held it above his head so you couldn’t reach, and Hotch… Well, for the first time in a long time you didn’t know what Hotch would do. So you typed the message out and pressed send before putting your phone in your pocket and pushing the thought to the back of your mind.

You walked to the bullpen to find Emily and JJ, but the two of them and Morgan were leaning over the railing outside your dad’s office, talking to Garcia.

“The guy is a fussy, anal-retentive neat freak who-” Emily stopped herself when you approached.

There was a pause and all of them looked at you. It was the same way agents used to look at you when you were a teenager and walked in on them conversing about a brutal case- you had heard something that you weren’t supposed to hear.

“Let me guess,” you started. “We’re talking about my dad?”

You peered behind Emily to see what all the fuss was about, and indeed it was something to fuss over. Your father’s files were scattered all over his office- the desk, the table, and the floor were littered with papers that would take hours to organize properly. Never in your life had you seen your father’s space look so messy.

“Oh, Papa.” Your jaw fell slack in shock and you rushed up to your dad’s office to get a closer look. Nothing was broken- his favorite mug was empty on his desk, the lamp stood tall, and the glass of the picture of the two of you was still intact- but your father’s filing system was like an extension of his brain and at the moment it was destroyed. “Fuori come un balcone…” You muttered as you looked around at the disarray in front of you.

“Say what?” Morgan asked.

“She says he’s gone crazy,” Emily interpreted.

You looked back at Garcia. You loved Penelope, you truly did, but if she didn’t tell you where your father was, you thought you might become the next unsub the team had to hunt down. “Where did my father go?” you asked, your tone serious. Almost dangerous.

Garcia turned serious as well. “He’s in Indianapolis on a 20 year-old double homicide. He said it’s time someone pays for it, and he was upset.”

You shook your head in slight disbelief- you must have been around seven or eight when it happened, but you had no distinct memory of your father coming home upset over a case at that age. When you were that little he tried to keep you as far away from the bad part of his work as possible, but surely you would have remembered something that disturbed him this badly.

The rest of the team’s chatter was background noise until Morgan tapped you on the shoulder. You turned to look at the team member who was probably least impressed by your father, but a team was a team to Morgan and that’s all that really mattered.

“Rossi-Reid,” he said. “Let’s go.”

---

It felt like the start to a bad joke… You, JJ, Morgan, and Prentiss walking into a bar. But seeing your dad look so defeated made you want to do anything but laugh. You’d grown up thinking he was invincible, and even though you knew better now it still hurt something inside you to know that he wasn’t. You couldn’t even bring yourself to speak as the rest of the group convinced your dad to let them help.

Rossi finally turned away from the bar. He looked at everyone, but his gaze lingered on you just a bit longer than the others. “Why do you care?” he asked.

You wanted to speak, but you couldn’t bring yourself to open your mouth.

“Because you do,” Emily said.

Without another word, Rossi grabbed his drink and walked over to a section of the bar that looked more like a lounge. All of you sat down and your dad began to talk. The case wasn’t even supposed to involve the BAU- your dad just happened to be in the car with the detective when he got the call. They were first on the scene of a brutal murder, leaving three kids as orphans, and there wasn’t anything to lead them to a suspect. The murder weapon, an ax, had been wiped clean.

“It turns out it belonged to the family,” your dad said. “The oldest daughter, Connie, told me her father bought it on Christmas eve a few months earlier to cut down the Christmas tree.” He sighed heavily and suddenly things started to make sense. “Now I always associate the whole thing with Christmas… Never been able to put up a tree myself again.”

You gazed down at the floor, unable to look at your dad. You recalled the first year the two of you didn’t go to pick out a tree; how you’d found the ornaments in the trash and suddenly your dad began giving you gifts on New Year Eve instead of Christmas day. You always assumed that he thought you’d outgrown the holiday- you knew that Santa wasn’t real and reindeer couldn’t fly. Snowmen didn’t come to life if you gave them a magic hat and the north pole was just a place full of snow instead of candy forests and elves that built toys.

You’d attributed his sadness on Christmas day to the fact that you were getting older, but the whole time it was because he was mourning parents that would never get to see their children grow up and children who would have to grow up without their parents to take care of them.

“When we arrived on the scene, before any of the other units got there, I could hear them before I even got out of the car.” The look in your dad’s eyes was distant, as if he was still at the scene from long ago.

“It was a warm morning and the windows were open in the upstairs bedroom… And their voices floated out into the street. They were crying and calling for their mommy and daddy.” You’d never heard your father so close to tears. “Three terrified children, screaming for their murdered parents. I've seen so much death and pain, but that sound… It's been twenty years and I can still hear them screaming every night, crying.”

You’d known your dad had nightmares occasionally- it came with the job- but it had been so long since you lived under his roof, you’d wondered if they had gotten worse as time went on. You wondered if, just like an unsub could be triggered by an anniversary, a profiler could too.

“If I can't tell them for sure that whoever’s responsible will never do it again, that screaming might never stop.”

Your dad finished off his drink and you, JJ, Morgan, and Prentiss looked around at one another. You’d been quiet for a while now, letting the rest of them do the talking while you sat with your memories and feelings, but now that you had processed everything you were ready to get to work.

“Well,” you said, looking at your dad. It was a good thing you’d gotten his stubbornness. “Let’s find who’s responsible for it then.”

---

It was easy enough for Garcia to find out where the children were living now, and before you knew it, Morgan was pulling up to the house and the team was getting out of the SUV, ready to face the case that had haunted David Rossi for two decades.

“Hi, Connie,” he greeted the oldest daughter. She couldn’t have been that much older than you. No wonder this case had hit him so hard. “I brought the team-”

“You need to stop this!” It was almost as if she was begging.

“Excuse me?”

“We thought that if we didn’t call you back the last couple of times you would just give up and leave us alone,” she said, her voice unsettled.

“Well, I know that it hurts, but I’m only trying to make sure someone pays for your parents’ deaths.” After nearly six months at the BAU, you’d never heard Rossi be so gentle with someone. The last time he used that tone was when he talked to you after Gideon left.

“We don’t care anymore!” Connie stressed. “It’s been twenty years. We need to be able to move past it, please!”

Your dad had always been a pusher, so when he responded with “I won’t bother you kids again,” and turned to get back into the car it surprised you a little. Part of you wanted to push for him.

“And you’ll stop it with the gifts too?!” That made all of you pause and turn back towards the family.

“Gifts?” The wheels in your dad’s head were beginning to turn.

“What are we supposed to do with a bunch of toys that remind us of the worst day of our lives?”

Rossi paused, his stare pointed at the girl with the intensity of the agent you knew he was. “I never sent you any gifts.”

Within ten minutes the three kids, who were now all adults, compiled the toys they had been mysteriously given over the years. You put on a set of rubber gloves and began to inspect them. You automatically knew your dad would never send toys like these to anyone- the material was falling apart in your hands, the stitching easily ripped, and they smelled like chemicals from a warehouse. One of them even left colorful dye on your gloves. Rossi was a best selling author, but even before that he’d always had expensive taste. Your own favorite childhood toy was an FAO Schwarz Teddy Bear that was older than this case and was still in decent condition- considering how much the stuffed animal had been through.

“See, an unsub like this, when they seek out children, they want to play with them,” Morgan explained. “They don’t really want to hurt them, but it’s their size- it frightens people.”

You stood up and stripped off your gloves. Done inspecting the evidence, you looked over at your dad. “This could be that piece you were looking for.”

Soon enough Garcia had gone through crime records and the team was on the move, searching the grounds of a carnival. Rossi and Prentiss paired up while you, JJ, and Morgan inspected the grounds.

“I can’t believe people actually pay good money to play these fixed games,” Morgan said.

“Men,” JJ said blankly. You snorted.

“Excuse me?” said Morgan.

“It’s not people,” you clarified. “It’s men.”

“Is that a fact?” Morgan tried to seem unbothered, but you’d known him long enough to know he’d probably tried to impress several ladies by winning them prizes on impossible ring toss.

“Only a man would waste fifty dollars trying to win a three dollar stuffed animal,” JJ said.

Morgan huffed a little, but the three of you kept walking, looking for anyone who could possibly resemble the unsub you were looking for.

“Clown.” You spotted him, white make-up still half on his face and red smeared around his lips. Morgan and JJ looked in the direction you nodded in. The clown looked back at the three of you and promptly dropped his trash bag before walking off.

The three of you went to look for him, trying not to look too threatening or suspicious. It didn’t take long for Morgan to spot the man’s discarded broom near a covered platform. Drawing your side arm and preparing for the possibility of a fight, JJ pulled down the cover to reveal the unsub hiding like a small child. It took you and Morgan combined to get him out from under the platform and cuffed. JJ kept her side arm ready just in case while Rossi restrained the unsubs father and Emily aided you and Morgan.

You took a moment to look over at your dad, but he was looking at the unsub- the man who he had spent twenty years trying to find. You expected him to look relieved, at least a little bit, but more than anything Rossi looked disturbed, as if he truly couldn’t believe that someone who had done such a horrible thing had a right to exist on earth. He should have been nothing more than a speck of dirt on your Papa’s spotless shoes, but he was a monster in the shape of a man- the reason three children had screamed for their dead parents; the reason your father heard their screams every night. And when your dad looked at you, you knew that he was thinking about twenty years worth of Christmas’s lost- twenty years worth of childhood and twenty years worth of memories.

At least you could make up for them now.

---

The jet was quiet- JJ filling out the paperwork to make the case official, Morgan with his headphones, and Prentiss with a book. Everyone except your dad was busy with something. He was just looking out the window, lost in thought.

You closed the file you were working on and moved to the other side of the jet, sitting across from him. He looked over at you, breaking his gaze away from the clouds.

“Mio passerotta,” he said, a smile in his voice. “You did a good job today.”

The compliment surprised you. Really you had done no more than the rest of the team, but the way your dad looked at you was different than he had before- like he was seeing you as more than a kid and more than an agent. He was seeing you as both.

“You know, I really wish you had told me,” you said. “Maybe not when I was little, but before you threw your files all over your office and we had to fly two hours to find out why.”

“Well,” he sighed. “Now you know.”

“And now you know why we work as a team,” you said.

He nodded once, slowly. “I guess I do,” he said. “But, mio passerotta, you and I have always been a team.”

“Does this mean you’ll start treating me like a team member?”

“It does,” he confirmed. “But you’ll still always be my daughter.”

You smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

---

The mood was light walking back into the bullpen, and you felt yourself brighten even more when you saw that Spencer was back. Every ounce of you wanted to run up and embrace him. The past twenty four hours had been an emotional roller coaster and your body craved to be pressed against his. Spencer must have known, because when you walked over to his desk, he took your hand lightly and planted a soft kiss on your knuckles before answering Morgan’s question and directing Rossi to his office where Kevin was waiting for him.

“Just when I thought nothing scandalous was ever going to happen around here.” Emily smirked as your dad closed his office door to talk to Kevin in private.

“What?” Your husband looked confused. “What does that mean?” Then he looked up at you- an inter-BAU marriage was rather scandalous in theory, but you and Spencer were so tame in front of everyone that it really didn’t count.

“Didn’t you hear JJ?” Emily said.

“The song meant something? No- no I missed it,” Spencer began to ramble.

“It-it-” Emily sighed. “You know what, never mind.” She sat down at her desk.

“What?” Spencer looked towards Rossi’s office.

You touched his hand lightly, still leaning against his desk. “I’ll explain it when we get home, Spencer,” you told him. He nodded, but then went back to gaping at the closed door.

You looked up too- seeing that Hotch was in his office. Normally you would have gone to say hello and maybe tease him about having missed all the fun, but even from where you sat you could tell that he was far more distressed than normal. The papers he was holding weren’t just from a case. They were personal.

Your phone vibrated in your pocket and you pulled it out, expecting a text from Garcia, or maybe Morgan. But when you saw the name on the screen your stomach dropped. With shaking hands, you opened the message:

From Haley Hotchner:

I want you to be a part of Jack’s life. You’re an amazing person, (Y/N). I love you and Jack loves you. You’re right that he shouldn’t have to grow up like you did, with only one parent to rely on, but Aaron needs to figure that out himself.

“Mio amata?” Spencer said low enough so that Emily couldn’t hear. “Are you alright?”

You shoved your phone in your pocket. “Tesoro,” you whispered, holding back tears. “Portami a casa?”

Spencer grabbed your go-bag and his satchel, his eyes wide and sympathetic with understanding. “Let’s go home.”

---

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