This Place Is

It was a small cave off the highway where the last body was found, and the unsub's lair, and the unsub. Hotch had talked him down with a blow horn in four hours, and he was tired. Of this one-horse town, of the dirty backwoods, of the blood patterns everywhere. Even the red hues of the sunset were making it worse.

Prentiss and Rossi were flanking him. He really wished they'd get lost. Ever since Foyet had attacked him, one or the other was usually at arm's length. Closer, if possible.

"You see that sunset, Emily?" Rossi asked. Hotch restrained a sigh. It was the new game between those two, as his protectors, to talk around him until he joined in.

"Beautiful," Prentiss agreed. "Reminds me of one I saw in Italy, when we went to Tuscany for a week."

"It is colorful enough to be Italian," Rossi agreed.

"Would you two just stop, for the love of God?" Hotch demanded, sick of all of it, the banality and hopelessness of the whole thing. "Just stop. This place is death, nothing but death, how can you be rambling on about a godforsaken sunset?"

"Because you need to extract your head from your ass," Rossi told him.

"No, I need to find Foyet."

"You can't do that with your head lodged firmly up your ass, I guarantee you. Remember my case in Indianapolis? When did it get solved? When my head was forcibly extracted from my ass, that's when. So don't give me that bullshit."

Hotch shoved past Rossi and went to the SUV. He knew Prentiss would come next, to soothe and smooth, and he just might hit a woman for the first time in his life if she did. He was so angry he felt tremors in his hands.

He waited. Prentiss didn't come. Damn Rossi, he knew he'd just shoved Hotch too hard.

The only other one at the SUV was JJ on the phone, and she wasn't paying any attention to him.

Hotch didn't even know who he was calling until Garcia answered the phone.

"What's going on, boss? Do you get to come home?"

"Yeah, Garcia."

"That isn't relief I hear in your voice, Fearless Leader."

"I may murder Rossi and Prentiss. They're going to drive me insane."

"I told them to quit."

And that surprised him more then anything else. "Garcia?"

"I need you to do something for me, Hotch. I need you to buy yourself a donut of your choice, and take a walk while eating it. I want you, for the ten minutes you will be walking and eating that donut, to only think about the pretty, shiny, happy things around you. Not about Foyet, or Rossi or Prentiss or this team, or anything vaguely crime related. I want you to do this once a day except while on cases, because I know that's hopeless. Ten minutes a day. Rossi and Prentiss will leave you alone more, and I won't worry about your sanity either. Okay?"

He sighed. "I just want to have Jack and Haley home."

"I know. No one more then you, but we all do. You gotta believe that."

"I do, Penelope. I really do."

"Then try not to kill Prentiss, okay? That's my wingman. She finds guys that pretend to be FBI agents to get girls and we get to humiliate them."

He snorted. "You two would be great running an interrogation room together."

"I know. We are supremely awesome together."

"Thanks, Garcia."

"No more homicidal urges?"

"I won't kill Prentiss. Rossi isn't out of the question."

"More of a fair fight, though. Don't tell Em I said that."

"I won't."

"Donut. Walk. Nice, shiny thoughts. Ciao, Boss."

And she severed the connection.

Prentiss and Rossi appeared to be having a silent debate over who got to go to Hotch and calm him down. JJ was still on the phone. Morgan had Reid in a headlock, albeit a friendly one, and Hotch wondered if they knew what an odd couple they made, Morgan looking like a mob enforcer and Reid like a college student.

He looked at the sunset. It was still blood-red, dripping blood, but there was an amount of poetry in it, because it was the unsub's blood, almost. Not innocent blood. Not this time. Not all of it.

Maybe it had been a bloody sunset when Foyet had killed that old couple and that bus full of people.

Maybe not.

FINIS