A/N- So the idea for this story has been batting around in my head for years now, probably since SB originally aired. I actually started writing it about a year ago, then recently dug it out to finish. Spoilers for "One Shot Kill" "Here is the Fire" "Devotion" and non-case related spoilers for "Smother".
It was going to be a rough night; Mick knew that already. But not the kind of rough night he had led his teammates to believe. Sure, by morning he would have a name to go with his rough night and some stories prepared if anyone asked, which they wouldn't. He could always volunteer a few, to Prophet probably, within Gina and/or Beth's hearing, of course. Mick allowed himself a small smile. Yes, he might just have to regale Beth with a few stories, for he benefit. Gina was used to his antics and would just throw some sarcastic comments back at him. But Beth was still new enough the his casanovanic stories still bothered her. Only Coop knew the true contents of Mick's rough nights, though only in generalities, not in detail. Cooper knew his ghosts, had seen some of what he had seen, knew the things he had done. Which was the real reason Cooper made him go a round or two on the morning after a rough night. The physical exertion centered Mick, brought him back. Sometimes, it was enough.
They had hard cases all the time, but the last three had been particularly tough. Any one of them alone would have been enough to induce a rough night, but all three strung together... First had been that sniper case. That had started out with a rough night, now that he thought about it. And he never got a chance to work that one out, which was probably why he had already been a bit on edge before everyone starting making a big deal of the whole "sniper versus sniper" thing. And why he had let it get to him. He had gone a round with Coop after the case was over, but that had been about a different issue. That all aside, the case had dug up some ghosts Mich would have preferred to forget.
Before Mick had had a chance to work through that, the bomber case had come up, with the psycho guy trying to kill his own kids. Stepping out of the SUV in front of the school, seeing the chaos... hearing the pained voices... smelling the smoke... The assault on his senses had dragged him down into memories he thought he'd buried. Cooper had caught him fingering the kill brass he always kept in his pocket. They had talked a bit, as much as Mick ever talked about the ghosts that kept him up at night.
It was the last case though, that put him over the edge. Months ago he had told the very lovely Emily Prentiss that he would die for Cooper. She had been prying, but it was true; he trusted Cooper implicitly, would die for him, would do anything he asked. But what Cooper had asked him to do earlier today... He spent his days trying to forget the number of times he had fired his sniper rifle; his nights trying to escape the memories of the lives he had taken, but he knew it would be that one scene, those two shots, that he would be reliving, in countless forms, for many rough nights to come.
Shooting a rotting corpse, one that had been dragged half-way across the country by her deranged brother... it just seemed... wrong. It didn't help, couldn't help, that Mick told himself it was orders. He had done it because Cooper had told him to, because it was Coop, and because his years in the Special Forces had taught him to follow orders, even if he didn't like them.
Then again, focusing on the repercussions of shooting a corpse at least let Mick put off thinking about the real reason he was afraid to close his eyes that night. Sure, the unsub was mentally unbalanced, but his sister was his life, she was all he had, and he had lost her. That his just a little too close to home.
Mick tried not to think about what it would be like if he lost his own sister. He had taken care of Jenna since they were little, since their parents died. He could still remember the day she was born, and his father had sat him on his lap, and told Mick that he was a big brother now and he was responsible for protecting his sister. A responsibility he had taken seriously then, that had only intensified when they were left alone. They were adults now, of course, living their own lives, but Mick still felt a fierce protectiveness towards his sister, a need to take care of her and shield her from all the bad things in the world. If anything happened to her...
Well, at least Mick liked to think he wouldn't go on a homicidal rampage and drag his sister's decomposing body on some bizarre, revenge fueled road trip. Still... The devastation if he lost her was not something he was prepared to even contemplate. He wasn't at all trying to justify the wacko's actions, but getting inside the unsub's head had never felt so personal before. Jenna was everything to him. If she were killed he couldn't honestly say that he wouldn't do what ever it took to bring the person responsible to justice. Nor could he promise that he would let said justice come from the legal system.
Mick sighed, and slipped off his clothes, getting ready for bed. He could still smell rotting corpse, so he decided to take a quick shower, another tactic to delay the moment when the lights were turned off and the ghosts came. He stood under the stream of water, wishing it could wash the thoughts and memories away, to swirl briefly around before disappearing down the drain. But it couldn't, and it was a bad sign that images of Jenna's decaying corpse were trying to invade his mind before he even closed his eyes. Mick toweled off, shaking his head, but the thoughts couldn't be shaken loose any more than they could be washed away.
Tomorrow, Mick decided, he would go out and buy Jenna something nice and send it to her, to let her know he was thinking of her. But for tonight... tonight the ghosts were waiting. Mick slipped into bed, then reached over to click off the light, letting to darkness come flooding in. Then he closed his eyes, and waited. It was going to be a rough night.