This was intended to be a one shot, but it became bigger than I first thought so I will publish it in chapters.

But before uploading everything I'd like to know what do you think, opinions, criticism and comments are always very welcome and precious to me.

There will be characters and facts that I borrowed from 'the Swan'; the two stories are not related, I just liked those hints and wanted to develop them, but at that time they just didn't fit there, so I do it now.


IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Emily

I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the utmost ends of earth flowed somber under an overcast sky … seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness –Joseph Conrad-

She stares out of the window in middle of the night. A stranger invited her to have a coffee in a place in the middle of nowhere, it's desert and dark inside; she takes a better look, this cafeteria is scruffy, she definitely doesn't want to have a coffee here. It's the kind of place where she expects a horror movie to take place or the team to go for a deviant homicide. It's raining outside, a lot, it's pouring, even though she doesn't have an umbrella she is dry, she wonders how she managed to get in here without getting soaked. The guy, he's hot by the way, leans toward her from the opposite side of the table they are sitting at "The reason why I got you here is that I have to tell you a secret" he whispers. A truly annoying draft of air on her neck is making her frozen, she turns to understand where it's coming from before the hot guy can tell her the secret and she wakes up rolling in her bed.

Obviously it was a dream, a weird one. She would never accept a coffee from a stranger in a stranded filthy place, and when the hell could she find the time to meet a hot guy and go on a date with him? She left the window opened when she finally crawled up in bed few hours ago and outside it's now raining cats and dogs.
There's something about the noise of car tires driving through the rain, a particular feeling she can't describe. It's a mixture between wanting to stay wrapped into a warm blanket all day with a hot chocolate watching a Bette Davis' movie, and craving to run outside and feeling the rain on her skin, and feeling she's alive. Pretty much Emily Prentiss style, always compartmentalizing and struggling for balance, displaying self-control as it is required by her job and deceiving the extreme sides of her personality: the lazy and the crazy.

She looks back at the bed after closing the window, the cold blow of air woke her up, now she's not going to sleep again, this is definitely one of those moments when she would like to have someone in her bed to come back to, someone who holds her and keeps her warm and safe.

She leaves the bedroom and starts roaming around the house like a caged animal, trying to find some shelter from this sudden uncomfortable feeling. It's not the first time, it happened already, but she hasn't found the way to fight it back yet. It's a devouring hollowness, a hammering question haunting her: what is the ultimate purpose of Emily Prentiss? Not that she is not satisfied with her job, she loves it but what else does she have? What's left to her, aside from sleepless nights and frantic days chasing unsubs?

She looks back to the first years in the FBI, when once asked whether she had husband and kids, she used to answer that in that moment she was focused on her career and family would arrive later. Now she would like to go back and ask her younger self to quantify the notion of 'later'. Now that over ten years have passed still she doesn't have a family or kids and when she is asked she jokes about the scarcity of viable donors left, but deep inside she knows that being a profiler, work and family are an out-out, a mutually exclusive condition and Emily Prentiss is lost without her job.

In those moments while her lazy side curls up in despair and is caught by a wave of panic, her crazy side screams 'What are you doing? Standing still, without doing anything? Wake up lazy bitch! Go out, do something crazy and totally wrong and enjoy it, just for the pleasure of being alive, just because it's so wrong and it feels so good. Just because.'
Typically those moments are like chocolate cravings, which arrive in the middle of the night when everything is closed and she has either to keep her urge hanging or wander around the desert city to find an open grocery. She feels so pathetic right now.

Eventually, she resolves. Tonight the crazy is taking over. Life is not going to wait for her forever, and if the house isn't provide any comfort, then a run will.

Clean the body, clean the mind.

She looks at the clock: 3.30 am, the best time for a run. Then she looks out of the window at the gloomy clouds rushing into the sky and the flood down in the streets, and also the best weather.

As soon as she crosses the main door of her building the cold air and a spray of rain stop her, she takes a step back. Being miserable under the rain or at home? No way she's going to back out, she started something, she's going to finish it. If a serial killer cannot stop her from doing her job, four drops won't dissuade her from jogging.

"Fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumping night!"