[Western Crossover] The Plant Hunter

[Fanfiction for the TV series Criminal Minds, pairing: Hotch.

My profile also has completed Hotch fanfics, My Inner Thoughts When I Like You and Letters from Spring, and Reid fanfics, The Collected Poems of Birds, Reid, Why Do You Keep Coming into My Dreams Again and Again, and Hello, Neighbor, You Smell So Good.]

As a girl, Esme was trapped deep in the mountains. When she was near death and had lost all hope, a strange man's voice suddenly sounded in her mind.

The voice comforted her, kept her company, and guided her through the struggle of finding her way out of the mountains.

After she was rescued, Esme told everyone she met that a god was hidden in those mountains.

As an adult, Esme became a botanist, specializing in the vegetation of that mountain range. She published paper after paper and illustrated book after book.

She went into the mountains countless times, just hoping to meet the god in her heart again.

While searching for that god, she helped countless visitors who had become lost in the wilderness, just as she had.

Little by little, she became the god of those mountains herself.

One day, at the request of the sheriff, she helps FBI agents search for a murderer who has fled into the mountains.

The moment she shakes hands with the lead investigator, Aaron Hotchner, she freezes.

She hears the call of her god once more.

Right in front of her.

Esme once encountered the light, then searched for it, and in the end became the light herself.

Theme: Walk alongside the light, and you too will become the light