Related episodes: 3.20 Lo-Fi, 4.01 Mayhem

Decrescendo: to play with gradually diminishing force or loudness

The next day, I headed to Monarch Books for a couple hours of work after school. I felt lazy about dinner so when I was done, I walked next door to order some food to take home with me. There isn't typically much of a dinner crowd at the Crown Café, so I was the only one there besides Natasha who I spotted behind the counter.

"And what can I do for you, intrepid book stacker?" the older girl asked me.

I shook my head; Natasha was a little too much like Garcia sometimes for my comfort. I was certain they were related somehow, I just haven't been able to find the proof for it yet.

"Looking for some dinner to take home with me. Anything special today?"

Natasha took a moment to think it over and luckily, she had once thoroughly interrogated me on my dietary preferences. One thing Natasha never compromised was food.

"How does a tuna melt sandwich sound? And we should have some vegetable noodle soup left from lunch today."

"Perfect."

"Coming right up. Take a seat while I play with fire. Help yourself to tea."

I spotted the carafe of tea on the prep counter behind the register. I hopped over, grabbed a cup, and poured for myself, adding sugar. Today's blend was loaded with citrus, peach, and a hint of ginger. I was about to pour another to bring back to Natasha when my phone rang.

"Hey, Michael, I'm at the café, do you want some dinner or something?"

"Can you get to a TV right now?" Michael asked urgently.

"I don't know," I answered. "Why?"

"National news channel is reporting on the New York shootings," Michael explained shortly. "They mentioned someone on the investigative team was shot today."

"Tasha! I need a TV right now!" I shouted in the direction of the kitchen.

Natasha poked her head through the door and looked at me in concern. "There's a small one in that cupboard," she pointed out.

I crouched down and whipped the cupboard door open. There was a thirteen inch screen, an older model that had probably been there for years. I turned it on and switched channels.

"…the New York City detective was shot while pursuing a suspect in the recent shootings. We've learned that the combined forces of the NYPD and FBI were stationed throughout the city today in an effort to catch the persons responsible for the deaths of eight people, counting the shooting today."

On the screen, I saw footage of the paramedics loading a man into an ambulance. It was hard to tell what he looked like through the drape over his body and the oxygen mask over his face. Even though the news had said it was a detective, I couldn't be sure they weren't wrong.

"Hey, you still there?"

"Yeah, Michael. I need to call the team."

"I'll be by your place later."

I hung up and dialed Hotch's number while still watching the news. The camera had panned around and I vaguely recognized Emily and Morgan off to the side. I didn't see anyone else before the news switched stories.

"What's going on?" Natasha asked me, crouching down to my level.

"I don't know," I muttered. "Damn." I had gotten Hotch's voicemail. I left a terse, "call me back" message and then tried Reid's phone only to get the same results. Strike three was Garcia's line. "Shit, shit, shit."

"Rachel, you're freaking me out."

I looked up into Natasha's hazel eyes and saw that she was truly worried.

"My guardian, the team, they're in New York and someone working with them was shot today and I don't know who and now no one is answering their phone," I babbled. "That's never happened before. Someone has always answered me. But not right now, not one of them."

"Okay, just take some deep breaths, okay?"

It wasn't until then that I realized that I was almost hyperventilating. I hadn't had a panic attack it almost a year.

"Better," Natasha said. "If I'm understanding this right, your people are probably busy dealing with the aftermath of the man who was shot. Wait until you get home, eat something, then try calling again if no one's called you back, okay?"

I nodded dumbly and stuck my phone in my pocket. Natasha stood up and then pulled me to my feet. When I didn't move, she eyed me up and down critically.

"Maybe you should come home with me. You don't look too good to be on your own tonight."

I shook my head. "Michael, my friend, he'll come stay with me."

"If you're sure. But I'm driving you, I don't trust you on the road right now."

I didn't feel the need to argue that one. I simply watched as Natasha hurried through the steps of shutting down the kitchen, locking the register, and dimming the lights. She led me outside by the hand with a bag of food in her other. She put the food down to lock the front door rather than let me go. It was more comforting to me than I cared to acknowledge.

Any other time, I would remark that the cherry red Volkswagon Beetle was utterly typical for Natasha's personality. But I was too busy willing my phone to ring and trying not to dwell on the images my mind kept remembering. I could still picture Reid on a computer screen in Georgia, choking to death before my eyes. I remembered the smell of smoke on Dad's clothes when he had come home after the Bale bombings. There was Hotch, driving me home from the mall opening, worried about Haley and Jack. Or Garcia bleeding out on the sidewalk outside her apartment building.

I don't remember telling Natasha my address, but I must have since she pulled up to the right apartment building. She followed me inside and down the hall to the apartment where we found Michael sitting on the floor outside the door.

"What happened?" he demanded after only one look at me.

"I can't get any of the team to answer their phones," I explained. When I said it out loud, it really did sound like a silly thing to worry about to the extent that I was. But no matter what I told myself, I couldn't shake the bone-deep certainty that something was wrong and that it was about to get worse.

Luckily, Michael and Natasha seemed to realize that it was futile to tell me not to worry. Michael took the keys out of my numb hands and opened the door, gently pushing me inside. Natasha stopped at the door and put my back pack down on the floor just inside. She then handed the food bag to Michael.

"My dad and I will bring her car over tomorrow, so don't worry about that," she explained to him. "Just stay with her and try to get her to eat something."

"Thanks," Michael said. "I'm glad you were there."

Natasha nodded and then pulled a pen out of her blouse pocket. "Here's my number," she explained, writing it down on his hand. She should have been smirking as she did it, but she was still solemn. "Call me when you learn something."

I was still standing in the front hall like a zombie when Natasha reached out and hugged me and said good night. After she left, Michael locked the door behind her.

"Change into something more comfortable while I get the food ready," Michael instructed me. "I have a feeling it's going to be a long night."

It wasn't until I was in my bedroom and changing out of my skirt and blouse that I even realized I had obeyed without thinking. I took ten seconds to decide I didn't mind and then finished putting on yoga pants and an oversized tee shirt. Hannah followed me back into the living room and joined me on the couch. I grabbed the TV remote and turned on the same national news channel as before. Nothing about New York.

Michael brought over a bowl of reheated vegetable noodle soup—Natasha had packed that but had given up on the tuna melt apparently—and a chunk of bread.

"I'm not hungry," I protested.

Michael raised his eyebrows. "I really do not want to get in trouble with that chick for not following her orders." He turned to Hannah and said, "Your food is in your bowl, cat."

I ate automatically without noticing trivial things like taste. I ate because Michael told me to and it was all I could handle right now to do what someone else was telling me. I felt numb, but a different kind of numb after Mom died or Dad left. This time, I was tense and waiting for a possible axe to fall, telling me that I had lost someone else important from my life. I was positive that should the worst happen, I wouldn't be able to handle it.

Michael took away my dishes as soon as I was done and returned quickly to sit silently by my side, shooing Hannah off the couch so that he could sit flush up against me. He grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and laid it over the both of us with his arm around my shoulders, holding me tight. There was no sound except our breathing and the news coverage that still wasn't what I wanted—needed—to hear.

I had thought that the early evening was unbearable, but then I learned what that truly meant.

Around ten o'clock, the news had cycled back to the New York shootings, but instead of recapping what had happened earlier in the day, they had more to report.

"We've just received word that a black SUV parked outside the federal building has blown up. It is believed that this incident is in connection with the shootings that have occurred in recent weeks. There is no word on any victims in the vehicle or the area as law enforcement is maintaining a barricade while they sweep for other incendiary devices."

Even years earlier, I had joked about the stereotypical black SUV that Dad and the rest of the team drove when they were on a case. I had ridden in them myself. There was no doubt in my mind that someone I loved was involved in the car bomb.

"There's no reason to think one of the team was in that SUV," Michael hastened to assure me, looking at me intently while I stared blankly ahead at the screen. There were now images taken from a distance of a smoldering ruin of a truck with debris scattered over half a block around it. I couldn't make out any people or bodies from the footage.

"Rachel, look at me," Michael commanded.

I did and saw that his face was fierce and determined.

"Until we hear from someone, we do not know that anyone is injured, let alone anyone we know. They could have blown the car before anyone got in."

But I was certain. It was a typical FBI vehicle parked outside the federal building, it was about the time of night that the team would head for their hotel to get some rest before the next day. Even though I had no proof or hint, somehow I knew that one of team was hurt…or dead.

It wasn't until Michael seized me in his arms that I realized I was shaking. I flung my arms around his neck and cried into his skin as he rocked and held me.

"Someone would have called," I whispered. "Hotch or Spencer or Garcia would have called me by now to tell me something or just let me know they were all right. God, I can't lose them. Please, please, I can't lose any of them, I just can't."

There was nothing Michael could say to convince me otherwise, so he just hummed in my ear and kept rocking me. He turned the TV off and we stayed as we were as I lost track of time. It could have been minutes or hours, but at some point, I fell asleep, praying that I wouldn't be mourning someone in the morning.

I woke up when Michael was slipping out from underneath me; I had fallen asleep practically on top of him. I blinked several times, trying to put my thoughts to some semblance of order. It took a few seconds to realize that Michael had only left me to follow the sound of my cell phone ringing on the kitchen counter behind us.

"Thank God," I heard him say before he picked it up. "Hello? Yeah, she's here, she's sleeping. Is everything okay? What? Wait, I think she's awake."

I levered myself upright, noticing in the faint dawn light from the windows that Michael looked disheveled and worn out as he walked over to me, my phone in his hands.

"It's Reid," he told me.

I snatched the phone from his hands and pressed it eagerly to my ear.

"Spencer? Are you okay, what happened?" I demanded breathlessly.

"We're all right, Rachel."

I almost cried in relief just hearing his voice.

"Listen, I know you've been worried. None of us had the time to call you back and then…"

"The car bomb, I saw it on the news," I interrupted. "Was it someone on the team? Tell me!"

"Hotch was right next to it—" my breath caught in my throat "—but he's okay. All of us are okay. After the explosion, we lost communications for a while and then we had to find the terrorists. I can't tell you anything more than that, but it's over and we're coming home today."

"Okay, okay," I said softly, more to myself than to Reid. "Is Hotch hurt?"

"Some. He has damage to his right ear drum and abrasions. Morgan is driving with him back to DC, the rest of us are flying in. We should be leaving around seven a.m."

"But you're all okay," I repeated, because I needed to hear it again.

And of course, Reid understood that. "We're okay. I'm sorry that you had to sit in the dark with this. It couldn't have been easy for you."

"I've been a wreck," I admitted. "But I'll see you when you get home, right?"

"Yes. I'll stop by and then Hotch should be home a couple hours after that."

"Okay." I took a few deep breaths and ordered my heartbeat to slow down. "Tell everyone that I'm glad they're all safe for me, will you?"

"I promise. I'll see you soon."

I hung up and then collapsed backwards onto the couch, flinging my arm over my face to hid the fresh tears.

"Everyone's good?" Michael asked me.

"Yeah," I answered. "Hotch was right next to the car when it blew up, but he's fine. No one else on the team was hurt and they're all coming home today."

Michael heaved his own sigh of relief and came to sit by my feet on the couch. "Good." He leaned back until his head was resting against the back of the couch.

"Thank you," I said quietly. "I don't know what I would have done without you last night."

Michael reached out and squeezed my free hand. "Whenever you need me, I'm there."

There was probably a lot more I should have said to him, but I was too tired to work out what I wanted to say. I knew that Michael understood anyway.

I fell asleep for another couple of hours and woke up again when I heard Hannah meowing for her breakfast. According to my watch it was eight o'clock and Michael was still sleeping next to me on the couch. I got up and fed Hannah before going to my bathroom to take a shower. In my head, I worked out that Reid should arrive in a couple of hours and Hotch at least by noon. I wasn't on the schedule to work today and didn't have anything else planned.

I came out into the living room with damp hair and clean clothes on, jeans and a tee shirt. Michael was sitting up and blinking rapidly to wake himself up.

"Breakfast?" I asked.

"Sure, but I have work today."

He said it hesitantly, like it was okay for me to ask him to stay and find someone to cover for him.

"Breakfast burrito it is then," I said, answering his implied question.

"If you're sure," Michael offered.

"Yeah," I promised. "Most of my emotions have stabilized once again."

"Rachel, seriously, any time you need me, I will drop everything else," Michael swore.

I looked at him steadily, meeting his eyes. "I know that," I said seriously. "And I can never tell you enough how grateful I am that you would."

"It goes two ways, you know," he pointed out.

I remembered the times Michael would be withdrawn, hurting mentally or physically, and how I would also just sit with him and be there until he would pull himself together again. It really did define our relationship and always had from the beginning.

"I am so lucky to have you as a friend," I said.

"Ditto."

The quirk in Michael's lips as he said that last bit broke the atmosphere and I smiled. I scrambled some eggs, onions, peppers, and pre-cooked bacon together and rolled the mix into two tortillas for us to eat and sent Michael on his way to work.

After he left, I called Natasha and spent a half hour with her on the phone, assuring her that I was okay, apologizing for freaking out on her, and thanking her for everything she had done. Once that was done, I turned to the apartment and did some quick cleaning to keep busy until I heard Reid knocking on the door.

When I opened the door, I don't know which of us reached for the other first, but between one breath and the next, I was practically on my tip toes and hugging Reid for all I was worth. He was squeezing me almost as tightly and without hesitation.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry you had to go through all that."

I held back fresh tears by supreme force of will. "It was nothing compared to what you guys were dealing with."

I had started a pot of coffee when I had made breakfast earlier which was now ready. I automatically poured Reid a cup with lots of cream and sugar and made a second cup for myself. I was very slowly becoming as dependent on the stuff as Hotch and Reid. Most people my age would drink lattes, mochas, or macchiattos, but wouldn't touch straight coffee even with cream and sugar. Yet another example to how I was different from my peers.

Reid looked exhausted, the bags under his eyes dark and he seemed to be running on fumes from the tension in his body and his fingers twitching.

"Did you get any sleep last night?" I asked.

"Not exactly," he answered. "After the SUV blew up, we were working on the case until we finished early this morning. I slept some after I called you and then on the plane."

"What was going on? How did the case turn from random shootings to a car bomb?"

Reid took in a deep breath and I got the feeling that I wasn't going to be learning any details about this case.

"The shootings were a method of measuring police response times. The bombing was actually a ruse for the unsubs to get to their target while distracting us. Other than that, I can't tell you except that we stopped them."

Well, that was more than I was expecting.

"How close was Hotch to the bomb?" I asked quietly, slightly fearing the answer even though Reid had told me that he was okay.

"Close enough to damage the membrane in his right ear, but he was blown clear of the blast for the most part," Reid answered carefully. "Rachel…"

I had been staring in my cup of coffee while he spoke, but now I looked up.

"I don't know if Hotch would want you to know, or if he would want me to tell you, but I think you should be aware of what happened."

"Spence, you're kind of scaring me right now," I admitted.

He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes with his hand. "That's not my intention. When I told you that none of our team was hurt besides Hotch, that was the truth but not all of the truth. There was another agent with Hotch when the bomb went off. She was the local team leader and she and Hotch have known each other for several years."

I felt a pit forming in my stomach as I anticipated what Reid was about to tell me.

"She suffered more damage from the explosion and because of our tactics, there was a long delay before she was able to get medical attention. She died early this morning during surgery."

Immediately, I was glad that Reid had told me. I remembered how I had felt when Dad had been acting strangely and I was clueless about what was going on. Reid had been my informant then, too.

"Rachel?"

I hadn't spoken a word and Reid was watching me in concern. Saying 'thank you' sounded odd, 'sorry' was inadequate.

"I'll see if Hotch tells me," I finally stated. "If he doesn't, I'll just be careful not to bring it up or let on that I know."

"That's probably a good idea," Reid agreed.

There wasn't a whole lot else to say, so I told Reid to go home and get some real sleep. He still offered to stay with me until Hotch got home, but I quoted back some of his own statistics about drivers falling asleep at the wheel.

I turned to one of my common coping mechanisms and started making chocolate chip cookies. I was cleaning up the kitchen an hour later when I heard the front door unlock and keys jingle. I turned around and Hotch was putting his briefcase and go bag down on the floor in the entry way. I remembered years ago, when Dad had come home from the Bale bombings smelling of smoke and looking ragged.

Hotch was dressed in his usual suit and a clean one at that. I saw a handful of scratches on his face and the small bandage on his ear. His shoulders were tense as bow strings wound too tightly and I saw a pinched look in his eyes.

He didn't seem to know what to say and neither did I. But going off what I had done in the past, I walked up to him and gently wrapped my arms around his ribs and held on. After moments that felt like an eternity but what was probably just seconds, Hotch's arms came around my shoulders and he squeezed lightly. I kept still, waiting to follow his lead in breaking apart.

Instead, Hotch continued to hold me close and even leaned his head down until his cheek rested against my head. I was braced to support more of his weight as he leaned slightly, exhaustion radiating from him. Exhaustion and grief.

Reid had told me about the damage to his hearing so I didn't bother with words. I just stayed where I was, thankful that Hotch had come home to me alive.

Notes:

And wow, that's the end of Sonata in G, Mvt III. Lots of changes, lots of development, we said good bye to some characters and hello to others. I simply cannot tell all of you how much I appreciate and feed off your responses and commentary. This is the longest running series I have ever contemplated and kept going and a great deal of the credit goes out to you. Your reactions and support have kept me going and kept me thinking and writing. I hope you all know that.

I will now turn my attention to Mvt IV. There are some episodes that I am greatly looking foward to writing and some that I'm not quite sure will come out the way I'm hoping. I can only hope that my work continues to entertain you and that you find the characters as riveting as I am. Even the ones that are of my own creation, I am constantly surprised at how they manage to surprise even me when they write themselves.

With all my deepest and sincerest thanks, I hope to hear from all of you again with the next movement which I hope to start posting in early summer. Until then, my friends, farewell and thank you.

Cantoris