A Jackson Pollock painting. Sick, but that was what it reminded her of. The sheet was a white canvas, like the lost life of the girl underneath, and both were blood-soaked and ruined. Jordan didn't lift the sheet, and it wasn't because of crime scene contamination. The pale hair spilling lifelessly out from under it told her enough. It was her guilt made manifest. She eased the door shut behind her in some measure of respect for the dead but couldn't help turning back. The colorful, childish letters at eye-level spelled out the name of the murdered teenager. The room was empty now. No more deafening music, no more exorbitant phone bills, no more nail-polish sleepovers. All of their scheming to catch a killer had not prepared her for the real thing. Beautiful, innocent things trussed up like flies in a web. Poison running through the veins of this family, paralyzing it forever in this grisly mock-up of a home, once a fortress of love and protection from the evil outside.

SASHA. Here she lies.

Jordan turned and made a break for the front door. She vaguely heard steps hurrying up behind her as she finally sank to the ground under the weight.

"Jordan?" She leapt around, and seeing Dave Rossi's startled face inches from hers caused her to flinch as she smothered the onset of a second ungainly pirouette. "Hey, kiddo," he said softly, backing away and holding his hands up in surrender. "Didn't mean to sneak up on you."

"Sorry," she muttered in the direction of his second shirt button. "I've... been a little jumpy lately."

"Spring-loaded, I'd say," he gently pointed out. "Something on your mind?"

Yeah, camping on it. Bonfire, s'mores, the whole nine yards. "Nah, I'm fine. Still getting used to my new schedule, that's all. I got more sleep than this in college."

"Nightmares?" was his shrewd reply. But Jordan wasn't going there, not now, not even with him. Maybe especially not with him. She was grateful for the wisp of comfort he'd managed to drape over the horror of that haunting California afternoon, but she wasn't entirely sure he couldn't see through her eyes straight into her fears and insecurities. She liked him, she really did, but she didn't want to be that vulnerable when she still knew him so little. She smiled at the combination of concern and problem-solving eagerness that laced his expression. It figured that she'd saddle herself with the best profiler in the bunch as a father confessor.

"I'm just a little distracted, it's fine," she brushed him off lightly. He nodded, obviously unconvinced.

"Just remember what I said; cut yourself some slack. And Jordan"—she had turned to flee for the relative safety of her desk—"I can just listen, you know." His smile was genuinely self-deprecating, and Jordan found herself smiling back.

"I know."

Five weeks later

There hadn't been any warning. She'd always known there wouldn't be, but she had never wanted to dwell on such stormy weather so far off on a distant horizon. But here she sat, surrounded by the team, half of them dozing, manila folders scattered across her lap and the seat next to her, just another day at the airborne office, and he was somewhere down there, blinking his way into the daylight he didn't deserve ever to see again. Trying to find out if there were any shards of his miserable existence to glue back together again. Hopefully Irvin Todd had forgotten he had ever had a daughter. She couldn't speak to what he might do if he did remember, and she would rather not picture it.

Jordan's hands shook as she sifted back through the current case files. She knew now why J.J. had needed such a long maternity leave. Who would be in a hurry to leave their safe home and sweet baby boy for the opportunity to live through a week like this—only to have four more candidates for Worst Vacation Spot in the History of the World clamoring for her attention the minute it was done? And if that weren't enough, after the phone call she'd received this morning, every misty unsub was graced in her mind with her father's demonic features. Every victim—bleeding, empty-eyed, battered or, in one case, broken in half—wore her mother's face. Not only disturbing, but annoying, since her mother was not dead.

Although sometimes she still wished she were, Jordan knew. Nightmares, pumpkin, nightmares. Terrors that just wait for the sun to sink low, way down low, bowing at their feet before they sneak into my head, and I see your Papa stalkin' toward me like he was huntin' a baby deer that's frozen in its little tracks; and then I wake up. Thank the good Lord. Used to be I didn't come out of it 'til the whole thing had played itself all out again in my dreams. Parole, she scoffed. What a joke. 'Papa' needed to be strung up with barbed wire. Unfortunately, Jordan's mother believed that justice might be slow, but it was waiting for her ex-husband with claws and executioner's axe outstretched. It was the only thing she and Jordan still fought over. The FBI had seemed as good a way as any to give Lady Justice that extra little kick in the rear that she often exhibited a desperate need for, in Jordan's thoroughly biased opinion.

And yet, she'd failed the first test. It still thoroughly galled her after more than a month that if she hadn't had this team around her, these friends, she might have just turned right back around and left the heavy lifting to those who knew what they were doing. But they'd saved her, all of them. First Dave Rossi, then Emily—even Hotch, after all their butting horns—had emphatically insisted that it was ok if she wasn't strong enough, analytical enough, cold enough. None of them had used those words, but that was what she saw as they worked the cases. As soon as the level of human desecration began to rise, the masks fell, shuttering down over their expressions and making Jordan shiver every time at the virtual strangers her friends became as they drew the lines in the sand between their hearts and the carnage.

The shift back often left her reeling as Morgan told a joke, Reid became awkward and boyish once more and Emily shared details of yet another disastrous date that always left Jordan wondering if men really were from Mars or had just drifted to an evolutionary halt soon after losing the fur. Garcia's voice on the phone was always a much-needed blast of fresh air in her lungs, but then, Garcia never visited the crime scenes or talked to the families. Photos and videos were horrible enough, but they still weren't entirely real. Hotch made her mad, but he always understood her side, and at least he didn't try to jump down her throat, it just happened. Which she understood, and could live with.

Dave Rossi was different. He didn't make her feel left behind. He was teaching her what he knew without making it seem too callous, too difficult or too gut-wrenching. Galvanizing, maybe, and obviously a challenge he craved, but then, it was obvious that he cared for the victims, and it never stopped being about them. His ego could have crushed her hometown like Godzilla on speed, but it only fed on his successes, and she had seen with painful clarity how his failures wounded him. And he was gentle to a fault, occasionally causing her to blow up in his face and demand that he stop treating her like a child. She would come to apologize later and somehow be surprised every time to receive only a "don't worry about it" and an offer to buy her a cup of coffee. She wasn't used to being forgiven, or forgiving, so easily.

Which brought her back to the present and the threat that would gain in imminence once more when the plane touched down. Please, God, she prayed, if you're there, and you're listening, please don't let him remember me. She'd already insisted on protection for her mother, who had argued her down to one bodyguard and one occasional police check-up, but she hadn't bothered for herself, knowing that five armed and pissed-off profilers would be protection enough. They can't be with me all the time, though, her brain whispered. And how will they know what they might be dealing with if I don't say anything? The problem was knowing where to begin. It was all so long ago, and she didn't want the team to have to deal with her personal ghosts. And I'm afraid of dumping all this on them in case they decide it's not worth it. She cared for them all so much, but she wasn't too keen on testing their reciprocity at this point.

It didn't seem like she'd have much of a choice, though. Besides the fact that she couldn't know whether or not she was actually in danger, when she looked up, she found that Rossi had at some point claimed the seat next to her and had obviously noticed that she'd been staring at the same page of the file in her hands for the last fifteen minutes.