Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes he wondered how he could look his team in the eye. During the grief assessments he saw their thoughts painted on their faces and colouring their voices. They missed her, and he couldn't let go of the secret that he held so close to his chest it was almost suffocating him to make that pain go away. Seeing JJ in the waiting room, they had shared a glance. In that one moment he knew that she wanted to tell them, the sobbing Spencer on her shoulder only weakening the chains that they had built around the important cluster of information.

They couldn't.

Too much had passed. At the time Emily was still in the country, running from the man who had turned their world on a slant, tipping them into a nightmare. If they had told them then word could have gotten out. She needed the chance to escape. However, in that time, as each person dealt with their grief differently, Hotch knew the window of opportunity had passed. To tell them now would rip open the freshly healed wounds, exposing the raw flesh once more and pouring salt into it.

Needless pain.

There was no knowing if Emily would come back. To Hotch, the Emily he knew had died when he had seen her sealed file. All the secrets she had been hiding from them, how could they really say they knew the real her? On his security detail, he recalled a young woman, bursting with life as she rebelled against her mother, coming home with the awful boyfriends or bizarre hairstyles just to shock her. The young woman he knew was gone, when Lauren Reynolds had been born she had died, and Hotch wasn't sure if Emily had managed to recover from that. If she had ever truly been herself again.

Sometimes he couldn't breathe, the thought of Emily dying at the hands of that man crushing the air from his lungs. Sometimes his blood boiled with suppressed fury. If she had trusted them... him... then she might not have had to run. She might still be here. Sometimes he just felt empty, looking down at the vacant desk first thing, wondering where she was before it all came back to him. In one sickening rush he would remember that she had lied to them, and the price for that had been greater than any of them could ever have imagined.

He knew that if he ever saw Ian Doyle he would kill him. He would squeeze the life out of his worthless body just as he had beat the life out of Foyet. No one touched what was his, and Ian Doyle had walked all over his territory, the repercussions of his presence still felt by those of the BAU. However, at the same time he knew this was Emily's fight. It had always been Emily's fight. If he were to intercede she would never be free of him, he would haunt her before taking her for himself. Looking at the clock, his hands clenched into fists. Any minute now Doyle could be dead. Every minute there was the chance that Emily could come home to him. He knew this was unlikely, in all probability she would not return, but somehow he could not extinguish the hope, and it was slowly driving him insane.

A/N: This just randomly popped into my head, and I really wanted to get it down. Part of me feels guilty for publishing so much, but one one-shot isn't too bad, right? Anyway, I apologise if this is awful, I'm exhausted and the idea wouldn't leave me alone. I know the 'Hotch reaction to Lauren' thing has been done a lot - heck, I've written another one about it! - but I hope you liked it nonetheless.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Criminal Minds.

I apologise for any spelling and/or grammar mistakes contained within this story.