Dark. Dark, dark, dark. With some creepiness thrown in. Have a pillow or a dog handy.

Next update will be the crossovers, really. This was just a plot bunny (a very large one) that attacked me.

The Third Who Walks Always

Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
when first we practice to deceive.
— Sir Walter Scott

Anyone can get into the FBI if they so choose. It's not that hard, really. Brush up on your penal codes, go to the gun range, get your mile time up, make sure you can work a dress or a suit in case you gotta go undercover.

Not so for the Behavioral Analysis Unit.

Nah. They're a different brand of people.

It takes a certain mindset to become the elite. You have to maintain your own sanity while trying to understand and undermine the skewed brain chemistry of serial killers, of rapists, of kidnappers, of child molesters. You gotta be stronger than the average Joe, gotta have a sense of self that's unrivaled. Most importantly, you gotta know what you're getting into. You have to know that when you're in, you're in. In fact, any "retired" SSA'll tell you three things that happen once you join that unit:

One: Once you're in it, it's your lifeblood.

Two: You can never get out.

Three: You can never run far enough or fast enough. It'll always be there. Beside you. In you.

Run if you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must, just never give up."
— Dean Karnazes

Aaron Hotchner started out as a prosecutor. He'd wanted to ever since he realized that just because he was a victim of his father's abuse didn't mean that he had to become a statistic, one of those people who become so twisted in the head that they go on a homicidal rampage. Nope. He'd be different. He'd make a difference. He'd put those sick bastards behind bars, for life if he could wrangle it. And for the most part, he enjoyed it. For one, he had the best girl in the world, Haley, who stuck by him in the worst of times.

Even at three in the morning when he'd break down because he'd found out a case had gone to mistrial, or someone had been paroled when they really shouldn't have, and he'd nearly lose faith in humanity. But Haley, bless her heart, would just sit there, listen to the silence, say everything in saying nothing. The next day would roll around, and neither would mention it, but Haley would make chocolate chip pancakes with extra maple syrup on top.

When he got offered the prestigious BAU job, he accepted it without a second thought. Haley was excited for him, too; neither, of course, knew just what it would cost. It was like reading the abstract of a paper: it sounds great, it's wrapped up in pretty, shiny paper with, yes, a few contingencies and warnings, but that's just all trivial because it's a job where you really feel you can help people, banish the corrupted.

He didn't notice when the nights he spent at the office got just a little too long, didn't see Haley watch the clock and sigh when it passed two a.m., or when she had to put their child to bed, when their child asked where Daddy's going, by herself. She'd tried to understand, really she had, and no matter what, still has all the respect in the world for him (even after the divorce, she thinks he's the most honorable man she knows). But the pressure and the absence, the cold side of the bed, simply got too much. She never stopped loving him, oh no, and she knows he never stopped loving her (or Jack), but they'd passed the breaking point.

They'd reached a precipice, below which were the churning waters of work and never-ending sociopaths, and Aaron jumped—pushed, both want to believe—while Haley was left standing at the top. Wondering when it'd all gone wrong.

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness, you'll never find it.
— C.P. Snow

No one was really surprised to find out that David Rossi, celebrated author and profiler, came out of retirement. He'd always been one of those restless retirees, those ones who left the job, but was incredibly reluctant about it. He didn't really even cite a reason. His cases were affecting, but not life-alteringly so. He'd had more than a few wives, to be sure, and the relationships hadn't worked out—at least one of them was kind of bitter—but he wasn't depressed or anything. He had his Lab, and that was all that mattered.

One day in 2008, he'd merely gotten…bored, is perhaps a good word. He'd dialed up Section Chief Erin Strauss, expressed his interest in coming back. Had it been anyone else, she probably would have told them in no uncertain terms to just go away, that they gave up the job and they couldn't come back. But it can't really be said that the BAU is teeming with adequate candidates, let alone someone of Rossi's caliber.

Moreover, he and Hotch were already familiar with each other, Rossi having been one of two (the other, naturally, being Jason Gideon) mentors of sorts in Hotch's transition from an attorney to a profiler. Rossi had felt Gideon and Hotch were more than qualified to head the team, and in any event, Rossi'd wanted to write a book, so he'd resigned with no true hard feelings.

He supposes what might have let him in on the fact that he wasn't ready to give up the life was when he got married to his latest wife. They'd gotten hitched after Rossi left, and even better, they got along, so theoretically, they should have been able to make it work. But Camilla was too insightful for her own good. She noticed that Rossi would get out of bed in the dead of night to research and transfer his notes to the computer for his new novel. On August 13, 2007—Rossi remembers—she'd said it was too much.

She still cared for him, obviously, but she could also tell that Rossi wasn't done with the life. Camilla had even let Rossi have the house, and she moved in with her brother. Rossi still, believe it or not, gets Christmas cards from her. (And her husband and their four kids, but that's neither here nor there.)

For a while, he'd confined himself to writing books, and that's as far as his interest in profiling and serial killers went. He wasn't that eager to get back in the line of fire. But then that all changed. He saw a news report, and found a clue in the media liaison's words that made him consider. He didn't re-join yet, definitely not, because who knows? He might have been wrong.

Except he wasn't.

By the end of the week, the BAU had captured the unsub, and Rossi had been right. His gut screamed at him that he was still an expert on this. When he found out Gideon had skipped out for whatever reason, his mind was made up.

The next morning, he made the call.

The morning after that, he got the call:

Rossi, can you come in by nine a.m. tomorrow?

Yes, of course.

Great. Hotchner will brief you about his team.

The rest, as they say, is history. Massively, massively crude and bloody history, but what can you do.

Energy and persistence conquer all things.
— Benjamin Franklin

If you'd told J.J. when she was still little Jenny who chased butterflies that she'd be the go-between for the FBI and all major and minor news outlets, a face to personalize a crime, she would have kicked you in the shins and told you there's no way she's going all the way out to Quantico, no sir. Then she'd yell for her mother, because hello, she's not supposed to talk to strangers.

Of course, she'd discover soccer after that, and when she looks up Pitt's website, applies for a scholarship, and scores it, she realizes that fuck yes, she's going to get out of East Allegheny, Pennsylvania. She'd've left a long time ago if she had the means to do so.

That said, as much as she may have resented the fact that she was raised in a town barely even on county maps, she still called her parents every day. All through college—even if it were to shout profanities unfit of how she was brought up—and through her first years at the FBI. They even made it to her graduation from the Academy.

But as she got more involved with her work, the calls started fading away, trickling down to one or two a week, and then once or twice a month, and then rarely. In fact, the last meaningful conversation she'd had was when Henry was born; and even then, she'd been so tired after labor that it was Will who did most of the talking to his sort-of-mother-in-law. She'd thanked him for it later as they both watched their little boy sleep, and she didn't catch his somewhat sad glance over her, just sighed in contentment as his arm slipped over her shoulders.

It was perfect for a while. (Well, as perfect as being a media liaison in the BAU can be.) There were still those nightmare-inducing cases, but everyone on her team had them, knew when to comfort and when to back the hell away; even Will, being a former detective, knew the routine.

So it comes as a genuine shock when she blinks and realizes it's been years since Henry was born. She and Will hadn't ever gotten out of that weird stasis between boyfriend-girlfriend and fiancés or spouses. They'd just…floated. For all appearances, they're married, and that's what they tell their boy, that's what they say at back to school night, but they'd never really hashed it out. Not officially.

She thinks Will kind of resents her a little for this. She knows he's always wanted to marry her, ever since she'd told him she was pregnant, maybe even before, and she feels like a truly awful person every time he looks at her longingly when he thinks she doesn't see. To his credit, he'd only ever brought up marriage a few times in their relationship, and she'd dodged the question without fail. Ultimately, he'd just quit asking. He's stayed with her, never unfaithful or uncaring in the slightest, and he's been a better father to Henry than she could have ever dreamed.

Her mother would—and has, actually—explicitly inform her that she's being ridiculous. Will's a good guy; what's she doing waiting? She's not getting any younger. Plus, there's only so long before Henry's naïveté at thinking his parents are married goes away. She puts that off, too.

She can't fathom when that happened. When her home life became the anomaly, when her work life became the thing she looks forward to. What does it say about her that she actually wants to go hunt down sociopaths and baby-killers instead of just talking to her pseudo-husband? What happened to her being the heart of the group, the one who never lost sight of what's really important? She's supposed to be the grounded one, the one who has that safe, paradisiacal core given to her by her own parents, who—as far as she knows—are still happily together. If they only knew the degree to which their daughter screwed up her life.

J.J. knows how easy it'd be to ignore her phone, to crush it into tiny bits, but when it rings that standard ringtone at one a.m., she rouses herself from sleep, glances at the display. Will, warm beside her, begs her in that tired, resigned voice of his that pangs her heart to not go, to stay with him just this once, J.J., please, our son needs his mama. I need you.

She doesn't. She gets dressed, hurries out the door, leaving the house to the sounds of Will comforting their confused little boy. She acknowledges somewhere inside her that she's reliving Hotch's fractured life to the T, and yet it's different. Because unlike Haley, she knows Will won't leave her. She knows he won't follow in Haley's footsteps.

So she drives. She drives, and she doesn't look in the rearview once. Because, what's the point? Will and Henry will always be there. This unsub over in Montana won't; and she has a plane to catch.

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.
— James Baldwin

Growing up being called every name under the sun and being kicked almost into unconsciousness on multiple occasions has made Spencer Reid immune to just about everything. Oh, sure, his muscle mass never makes it above scrawny, no matter how much he works out; he's perfectly aware that he'll never look like Morgan, never shoot like Prentiss, never stay perfectly focused like Hotch. And he's okay with that. Because, as incredibly intelligent and perceptive the rest of his team is, he's the one with the most brains. And yeah, fine, the statistics he could never help but rattle off weren't always relevant, but for the most part, his mind was the thing he cherished the most, and on many occasions, it'd saved not just his life, but others' as well.

As a matter of fact, and maybe this is hubristic of him, he doesn't know, he'd thought he'd never really be affected by anything. He wouldn't have joined the FBI, wouldn't have joined the BAU if he'd thought he'd be a lightweight. So when he'd been kidnapped by Tobias Hankel—or Raphael—or Hankel's father—or who the fuck ever—and broke down, it'd surprised him almost more than the act of being kidnapped in the first place.

He'd kept his wits enough to the point where he could lead the team towards his location through subtle clues, but inside, he was a mess. A convoluted, whirling maelstrom of chaos. He knows the team caught onto the fact that he was more or less traumatized by it, and he knows they were just trying to help, but truth be, he'd just wanted to forget all about it. He's still kind of ashamed at how he'd let the whole thing get the better of him. He might have been afraid of his own mind sometimes, he'd said as much to Morgan, but he was also proud of his own mind. He felt, in a way, it'd let him down.

It would only fit that he'd be ashamed of how he'd fallen back on drugs—Dilaudid to be specific—in order to deal with the events. But the thing is, Reid just couldn't seem to muster that up. He'd gone to the meetings, he had, and he'd hid himself much more carefully to his colleagues this time, but what no one knew is that he still kept a bottle of the drug in his nightstand drawer. He didn't use it every day or anything, but when he needed that pick-me-up, it was there. Like an old friend. The kind of old friend that your mother tells you is a bad influence, but the one you hang out with anyway.

Unfortunately, the thing Reid hadn't counted on was his own fallacy. He'd heard—he knew—all the numbers. How drug users—no, he wasn't a user, he wasn't, he wasn't—always get found out, regardless of how careful they are. They've been compared to killers before: once they start, they can't stop.

He thought he'd been careful. It's not like he hadn't brought the drug—no, medicine—to work before, just for a tiny little mood upper, wasn't like he hadn't stepped into a men's room stall for a minute or two. Never long enough to cause alarm.

He supposes he should have had a contingency plan for what he'd do if someone did come in. He didn't, so it just figured that it'd be Morgan who discovered him. If Morgan had entered even two seconds later, Reid would have been safe inside the stall, no one the wiser. But Morgan had, had seen Reid and started to say something, then stopped dead, an expression on his face that Reid had never seen before. Something between surprise, horror, and—worst of all—disappointment. Morgan was speechless, his eyes wide and bouncing between the needle and bottle in Reid's hand, and Reid's face.

Neither man said anything for an indeterminable amount of minutes. Long enough so that Prentiss came and knocked on the door. They didn't answer, so, rolling her eyes, she strolled in, thoroughly unfazed by the fact that she'd just barged into the men's restroom.

"Hey, Hotch and Rossi are already in the—" she began, and then saw Morgan's stone-still form, and then Reid's. Immediately, she, too, stopped short. It'd been subconscious, but the way she'd halted, right next to Morgan, it was as if there were two very clear-cut sides: Reid's, and everyone else's.

"What—?" Prentiss tried, clearing her throat. Nothing came out.

Finally, just moments before Hotch would get completely fed up and come in himself, Morgan, never taking his stare off Reid, gripped Prentiss's shoulder with bruising force, guiding her (really, it was more the other way around, but that's immaterial) out of the restroom, turning his back on Reid. Reid waited, but no one else entered; he guesses Morgan and Prentiss had said something to the others.

His heart was thudding inside his chest with what just unfolded, with what would happen going forward, but, as if his hands were moving of their own accord, he lowered the hypodermic into the bottle of liquid, pulled out a little more than usual, injected it into his arm. Felt the narcotic flow through his veins. Felt better. Felt empowered.

"How is it coming, Spencer?"

Reid looks up from his journal through tired eyes, gray-purple shadows above his cheekbones. "Fine," he responds.

The man takes the journal, skims over it. "You're doing well with the third person," he comments. "That's good. You're getting the hang of separating your self now from your self then."

Reid says nothing, grabs back the book. He wants to tell the doctor to go fuck himself, but even now, that's not really in Reid's vocabulary. So he just refuses to speak. Just picks up the pen again, starts once more scribbling in the pages.

The doctor sighs and walks out of Reid's room. A woman, a nurse, looks at him inquisitively. "Some progress," answers the doctor. "But he'll need to stay here for a while yet."

The nurse nods. "Pity," she says. "Boy like that, had such promise. It's too bad he turned to the drugs."

"Yes," agrees the doctor. "Honestly, I would have expected more improvement after this many years in rehabilitation. But everyone's different." Before departing to attend to the next patient, he ruefully casts a last glance at the door, at the sign that bears the words:

Reid, Dr. Spencer
Long-Term

Human potential, though not always apparent, is there waiting to be invited forth.
— William W. Purkey

One would think that Penelope Garcia's optimism is endless. And, for a while, one would be right. After all, anyone who can still see the glass half-full after being in the BAU, getting shot, turning people's lives inside and out, and an indeterminable amount of other atrocities has to have an infinite amount of optimism. Her Treasure Trolls and feathered pencil collections alone…

What encouraged this notion was that even after all the horrific things she'd seen, after all the rocks she'd had to overturn in order to see, as she'd dubbed them, the "creepy-crawlies underneath," she hadn't given up on her positive outlook. She consistently saw the best in humanity, when the rest of her team gave up on it, wanted to trust that every single person had good inside them. Sometimes, she even had confidence that there were good parts in the callous, cold-blooded murderers and rapists that the BAU would locate and arrest.

It wasn't a single moment in time when she lost that trust. If you asked anyone, they wouldn't be able to tell you. It was a gradual thing. Like watching someone grow up. You vaguely note that they're changing, but if someone asked, you wouldn't be able to describe to them what had changed. Not until you saw pictures, anyway.

It was like that with Garcia. She just…didn't try so hard to see the decency. She still had faith in her team members, of course, knew that they were a hundred percent good inside, but everyone else? Fair game. She even became halfhearted in her eccentric greetings and pet names. It'd started with Reid, for no particular reason; no "boy genius" or sarcastic "doctor." Then Prentiss and J.J., who admittedly hadn't really had many pet names in the first place. Then Hotch; she got rid of the "boss man," the snarky "honey." Finally, Morgan. She still periodically addressed him with a "baby" or "hot stuff," and Morgan tried to maintain his "baby girl," but eventually, it'd just…withered away.

More than once, they'd asked her about it, but her response every time was that she was simply tired. She'd overcompensate, then, for the rest of the investigation, just to preserve appearances. Soon, though, even that ended. It'd taken a few cases to adjust to it, but everyone had. It wasn't all that hard, to be honest—they were all burnt out. They understood that Garcia would burn out, too, sooner or later. That's not to say they weren't distressed about it (she was their one guiding light, their bright spot in a world of evil), but just as they had gotten used to each member of the team systematically losing their flicker of life, they'd gotten used to hers, too.

It would have been worse if Garcia's skills lagged as well, but they didn't. They were as fast and as flawless as ever, helped solve the cases just as proficiently as before.

Regrettably, it'd had side effects. Kevin Lynch, her loyal boyfriend, had felt her slipping away, and in spite of the innumerable ways he'd tried to salvage their relationship, the spark was just no longer there. Well, to clarify, the attraction was still very much so, but the effort needed to support it had faltered. They'd parted on mostly amicable terms, and last anyone'd heard, he'd been offered the NSA job again, and this time accepted it. It wasn't a secret that Kevin had taken the assignment because of the sheer distance it would provide. To forget.

Question her on it, and Garcia would say she didn't know what you were talking about. But after dozens more cases, including one where she'd missed what should have been a clear connection between the victims, she'd given up. Without so much as a goodbye note, she'd packed up all her things in the middle of the night, including everything in her apartment. She told no one where she went, what she was doing, and if anyone knows how to stay on the lam, it's Penelope Garcia.

To that end, the only things that prove she even existed are a lone, bright pink feather pen that she'd left on Morgan's desk, and a floppy disk sent to Kevin that contains something no one but he knows.

Hell is of this world, and there are men who are unhappy escapees from Hell, escapees destined eternally to reenact their escape.
— Antonin Artaud

It takes a certain kind of person to withstand childhood molestation by a trusted adult who, by all outside appearances, is the best thing since sliced bread. A courageous person. By all facts and figures, the odds that the abused would turn into the abuser are overwhelming. There's only a select few who have not only the willpower, but the strength of character to overcome it. Even fewer who decide to do something about it.

One of those few is Derek Morgan. That is, Supervisory Special Agent in the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Derek Morgan. He'd decided to, once his knee injury prevented any hopes of making the NFL, join the Bureau with the intent to put bastards like Carl Buford away for life, if he could wrangle it. (And, truth be, he wouldn't bat an eye if Buford and his vermin brethren got slaughtered in prison. An event that happens more than lots of people would think. Because even though prisoners are there for a reason, obviously have a skewed moral conscience, even they think child molesters are the sickest of the sick, and have no qualms in killing them. You murder someone, fine, but sexually abuse a child? Well, that's just despicable.)

Up until 2006, he'd never told a soul. Not one. Hell, not even a diary (journal, rather). He'd kept it to himself. Not because he didn't think it would do any good, he knows it would have if he'd persuaded those like Damien Walters and James Barfield to rise up, but because it was a part of him he couldn't bear to expose to anyone.

He's not going to lie. He wishes he could say something like he's relieved that it finally came out, that Buford was imprisoned. You know, that "burden off your shoulders" shit that counselors preach. But he doesn't. In truth, he feels the opposite. He feels awful. Oh, sure, he's glad that the kids in his neighborhood are safe from that fucker, don't get him wrong, but he himself? Not so much.

It's not as often anymore, but at least immediately following the revelation, his team members had looked at him differently. Not…not badly, per se, just…different. Garcia had been extra flirty and touchy; Prentiss had offered to go out and get sloppy drunk (okay, he'd taken her up on that—free beer is free beer); Hotch, albeit awkwardly, had suggested Morgan take some time off; Reid had rattled off some percentages that Morgan can't remember right now; only Rossi hadn't recommended anything. Morgan doesn't think that's because he was being perceptive or whatever, just that he didn't have any idea what he could give him, so he went with the hand-shoulder clap instead.

Morgan really didn't give a shit. He appreciated their gestures, truly, but there comes a certain time where enough is enough. Thankfully, after a while, they'd laid off. Kinda. There's still the occasional moment where he'll catch their stare on him, and when he looks over, they pretend their eyes weren't anywhere near his direction. It was annoying, but he put up with it. It's not like he wanted to bring more attention to it.

It got to the point where he just pretended none of the stares were happening. It was better that way. As long as his mother and sisters weren't told (he knows his co-workers would never do that, but still), he could handle his team having that information. After all, he'd gone through worse. A fuckload amount worse.

He'd thought it was under control. Really he had. It'd been over two decades—you'd think he could compartmentalize. But there was one case where a man was molesting kids in his town. Morgan's not sure to this day why it impacted him, why that one impacted him. They'd had many sexual abuse cases involving children before. For some reason, that one had just…struck a chord in him.

The man was going to go away for a very, very long time, the evidence was all there, but the man had made one last flippant remark about what he'd done to the children, and that's when it all went to shit. Morgan had kept his cool in the interrogation room, they'd let the bastard go free for the night (their plan was to catch him in the act), and Morgan had watched him stride out of the building like he owned the place.

He'd informed his team that he was going to turn in early. They didn't think anything of it, because, really, they trusted him. Moreover, they'd all been running on thirty-six hours of no sleep, and even Morgan's subject to exhaustion. So they let him go. He even went so far as to drive back to the hotel and park his car in the lot, make it look like he was there. Then he'd taken a taxi over to Jefferson Street, paid in cash.

He walked up to the front door, knocked, and the bastard answered. Morgan unholstered his gun, pointed it at the man, but understatedly enough so that, should anyone have been looking, they wouldn't have seen it. The man stepped back into the house, and Morgan followed. Locked the door.

He pistol-whipped the guy, sending him to the floor with a nasty head wound. Then he re-holstered the firearm. The son of a bitch wasn't worth a bullet.

No one heard anything. They couldn't have. Not with the way Morgan worked. He is an FBI agent—he knows how to cover his tracks.

When the police came to arrest the molester the next morning, they found him, predictably, dead. Blunt force trauma…to be generous. Morgan had gotten a furtive glance or two, but he'd convinced the team he had absolutely nothing to do with it. They believed him then, too. Morgan isn't Elle. He had more control over his emotions, he'd never do something like this.

Nobody lamented the loss of the guy. At all. Even the coroner wasn't keen on doing the autopsy. She'd just wanted to let the man rot.

Morgan stayed in the BAU. Why not? It isn't as if he'd done anything that was all that wrong. He was just…ridding the world of another bad guy. That's his job, isn't it?

Thing is, it opened the floodgates.

Initially out of legitimacy, Morgan had helped J.J. look over the mountains of case files that were overloading her desk. A favor for a colleague, a friend. But then, it escalated. Morgan started staying late, which no one challenged, stepped into her office. It wasn't locked—why would it be? He made copies of the files, placed the originals back exactly where they were. J.J. never noticed.

Morgan doesn't live with anyone, so it's easy to get out of the house. More fortuitously, the first few weren't that far away. He never brings his official piece, just on the off chance it would show up in ballistics or something. On that note, he never uses a gun, period. Knives, fists, or a chokehold. Efficient, fast, easy. He's never been suspected. Ever.

Over time, it's become second-nature. Like giving a profile. Or throwing around a football. He isn't a killer, no—he's just making the world a better place. He's helping out the prisons. The taxpayers. As his body has gotten used to the late nights, the dark circles under his eyes have stopped showing up. He has an extra cup of coffee every morning, but that's normal. He smiles, laughs, jokes, flirts, hangs out with the team after particularly harrowing (real) cases. At night, he silently dresses, drives out to a house, slices, dices, washes up, drives back, rewinds the odometer. Done.

Simple as breathing.

Best of all, he never falters, never blinks.

Not once.

If you are going through Hell, keep going…
— Sir Winston Churchill

Ask Emily Prentiss why she joined the BAU, she'll tell you it's because she's a damn good profiler, and outgrew the stagnant tasks of the FBI back in the Midwest. Big fish in a small pond. Of course, most people didn't actually ask her why she came to Quantico; they, as Hotch had initially, assumed it was because her mother had clout and pulled strings. It was worse judgment than female discrimination. The looks, the stares, the eye rolls for weeks, for weeks until people finally recognized that, oh, maybe this Prentiss chick can pull her own weight.

Ask her why she joined the BAU, and you'll get a false answer. All right, maybe not false, but certainly not the only one. No, the reason Emily joined the FBI was to forget. Forget about that time in Rome, when Matthew helped her and, as a result, got himself addicted to drugs and fucked up his life.

Thankfully, she possesses the set of skills necessary to be in the BAU, which made forgetting that much easier. With the hours they kept, and the concentration they had to give to solve a case, she barely had time to remember to eat, let alone remember that. Which was great. She doesn't resent it one iota.

Rossi's the only one who knows. The only one she'd ever told in the entire FBI; she hadn't even told her parents. Which, granted, she doesn't tell them virtually anything, but whatever. She thinks her mother would at first act shocked, and then maybe angry, but eventually just indifferent. As she has for every single moment in Emily's life thus far. It's just as well: what could her mother say anyway? "Sorry that happened to you, dear. Oh, I have to run. I've got a meeting with the President of Sudan at three. Can we pick this up later?"

Yeah. Right.

She thinks at some time it'll come out, some time she'll slip up. It isn't that she doesn't have confidence in her concealing abilities, but she does work with profilers. It's kinda their job to catch onto subtleties. She's not sure who'd be the worst to talk to her about it, honestly. Morgan would just look at her with that understanding brown gaze of his, Reid would…be awkward, Hotch would extend her counsel, Rossi would send her nice wine, J.J. would put Henry into her arms, let his tiny dimples and big grin do the rest. Don't get her wrong, Emily would be grateful, and for a while, it'd probably work.

But then she'd remember again. She'd have a dream, a dream of a child, a daughter, who would come to her house and ring the doorbell. She'd slap Emily in the face with verbal carnage, saying things about how Emily didn't want her. Emily would try and defend herself, claim the "No, you're not real—you were never born" card, but since it's a nightmare, that wouldn't fly. When the minute inevitably comes that she thinks she can't stand it anymore, she'll wake up, face sticky with partially dried tears. She'd go to work, pretend nothing's wrong. It'd be successful.

And, okay, she does for the most part blissfully blanks it out during the day. At night, her lower abdomen sends the intermittent sting of pain through her, but during the day, her colleagues have the capability to take it all away. Mercifully, they do.

At night, the terrors come, the pain swarms. She's accepted that. She's accepted that those demons will never leave her. They'll haunt her to her grave, maybe after.

Because Emily Prentiss is still in Hell, as she's always been, still assailed by memories of a lost childhood, of a lost child. It's just maybe a little less hot, a little less red. On a good day.

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
there is always another one walking beside you.
— T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"

What no one who enters the BAU realizes is that there's always another force, another presence, that walks beside you. Always. That part of your body that's just a little fucked up, just a little evil. You don't spent countless all-nighters trying to get in the heads of really fucked up people and not have it rub off on you.

You stroll around, brag about that chick or hunk you met at a bar and what an awesome evening you had, go to the gym in tight shirts and pretend you don't see the envious glances, you drag your ass home and kick back with a Guinness (or five) and throw on the game.

What you don't tell anyone is that there's always that dark, black shadow that lurks in the background like a Hellish messenger, the one that snickers You can't run forever. Not from me.

But you ignore it, 'cause, come on. You catch people, you aren't one of the caught. And you certainly as hell don't have any of that shit invade your mind. You look over your shoulder, and see nothing out of the ordinary, put the feeling aside and brush it off as just an aftereffect of almost being shot or whatever. You watch the Avalanche beat the Sharks and ponder why Marleau didn't block Stastny. You think of calling one of your colleagues, ask them to come over for pizza or something—while you'd both put up the guise that it's for no real reason—but think better of it. They're probably out on the town, having a blast. Just because you're in your pjs and sullen doesn't mean they are.

You ultimately fall asleep to some droning infomercial, more than a few bottles on your coffee table, tell yourself you won't dream, because the unavoidable nightmares that you can't really recall in the morning are a bitch.

Your phone wakes you, and your surroundings are fuzzy, and good God, has your apartment always been so fucking bright and noisy? But you've got a job to do, so you get up, find the aspirin and caffeine, get dressed, drive out to Quantico. You attempt to ignore that nagging feeling, the sense of eyes on the back of your head, pass it off as your hangover. Or maybe a new intern who's thinking that they definitely picked the right occupation if that's what they get to ogle every week.

The day goes by in a blur—not just because of the alcohol haze—something about you and everyone else being assigned random, routine consults, and you drive home, marveling at how, even though the day wasn't eventful, it's already midnight.

You glance in the front room, think you see something, turn on the overhead lights. It's nothing. You ignore whatever your senses had been tricking, grab some liquor from the fridge. You sit on the couch, feel that stare at your back, feel a shiver run down your spine.

You know it's irrational, just your stupid paranoia, but then think. (Later, you'll tell yourself it's the alcohol making you all loopy.) You realize you'd never felt this shadow, this oppression, before you joined the BAU. Somewhere along the line, a switch in your brain flipped, opened an invisible gate through which wisps of distortion could float. None so penetrable that you could detect them, but enough so that you could get inside your precious "unsubs'" heads, wisps that contain enough lies so you can deny whatever you wish to even yourself, you master profiler, you.

You wonder when it happened, can't pinpoint a time. You glance at your holster with your loaded gun on the table, set down your beer. You stand up, look in the corner. There's no shadow, never was, it's just in your imagination, your overactive, fucked up imagination, and you wonder how you, of all people, had fallen prey to this.

You turn out the light, shut your eyes, wait for the darkness to consume you. You never feel the moment, but when your alarm wakes you once more in the morning, you're ready to get inside a sadistic bastard's brain, poke around in there and figure out where they plan to go next.

As the months then years go by, your mind warps even more, but you can't tell, don't register that it's unraveling and winding at the same time. Finally, there's a case, that one case, that gets to you, and this time, it's too much. You can't handle it. You sign your resignation papers, crack open another beer, sit on your worn couch, snap the light switch down.

You wait for the shadows to overcome your mind again, can't feel them. And it's then that you really understand:

You can't run. It'll never leave you.

You realize, with an epiphany that surprises you not at all:

You're just as sick as those you chased.

In the black emptiness that's maybe your head, maybe your living room, the shadow laughs.