A/n: Welcome back! This is the second part of a trilogy, if you haven't read Criminal Minds: Behind the Scenes, please do go back and read that first or none of this will make sense. The Long Summer is a little different: instead of following canon storylines, this focusses on the summer between season 6 and 7. Very little is ever said about what happened in that time, so I've taken the opportunity to let my imagination wander.

There are also companion pieces that will be published under the title of Criminal Minds: Missing Conversations which are optional, but tell part of the story from points of view other than Rossi's.

Without further ado, I present Criminal Minds: The Long Summer.

Dreams

A 'hello again' after the final goodbye is sometimes harder than just keeping the goodbye as it was - Jessiqua Wittman

Rossi smiled in his sleep. He was dreaming about being on a spectacular beach, the scotch having sent him somewhere glorious for once. White sand, clear waters, beautiful sunrise, a gentle breeze. There was even a palm tree, its fronds rustling softly at the edge of his hearing. It had been a while since he'd felt so peaceful. The only thing that marred it was that someone had forgotten to turn off his cell phone. The ringing was eventually silenced, but the wavelets that had been softly lapping at his toes slowly receded until they were out of sight, and the sunrise was replaced by the uninspiring view of his bedroom ceiling.

He groaned, and rolled himself upright. These days, once he was awake, he was awake. No point lying in bed for hours when he knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. Especially not with a hangover. The early hours of the morning when he couldn't sleep were when he'd think of Pip, and rest never came while she occupied his thoughts.

Coffee. That was first priority. He'd need it if he was going to have to go into work after waking up at…what time was it? Rossi turned on the bedside light to peer at the clock and groaned again, with feeling. Almost 5am. Two hours sleep wasn't enough by any means, but it looked like that was all he was going to get. At least Hotch had said they could come in later than usual. Small mercy, but he'd work with it.

He'd better get the Blue Mountain blend out if he was planning on being a functional human being by the time he was due in the office. At least Mudgie wouldn't expect a philosophical discussion before caffeine had been taken aboard. His sensible dog was usually content to simply avoid his master until suitable quantities had been imbibed, as long as his food bowl had something in it.

It was a pity the same couldn't always be said of his colleagues. Reid in particular, felt that first thing in the morning was the time to ponder such points as whether children of multiple births ever considered that one or more of them of them were unplanned; or if anyone else had thought about the fact that asking for somebody's name was basically just asking what noise one should make to catch their attention. Yesterday morning's little titbit had been about brushing one's teeth. Something about it being the only time you clean your skeleton. Dealing with Reid before coffee was somewhat of a trial. It always had been, but recently had been much more irritating.

On the subject of cleaning, he'd fallen into bed still wearing the previous day's clothes. Again.

"You drink too much, Dave," he muttered to himself, wincing at the sour taste of second-hand whisky in his mouth and the pounding in his head. "Got to stop doing this, old man."

Rossi fumbled for his cell on the nightstand to turn off the now-redundant alarm he only vaguely remembered setting. He glanced at the screen and froze. Three words sat smugly on the display in defiance of all that was possible. Seconds ticked past as he read them over and over again, as if expecting them to change. Then he rubbed his eyes. It wasn't real. He was still dreaming, the beach replaced with something far more peculiar and cruel. He read the words again.

"Missed call, Pip." Uttering it aloud went some way to convincing Rossi that he wasn't still asleep. "Impossible."

"Please God, tell me I'm not going mad," he prayed as he hit redial.

A busy tone met his ear and Rossi frowned. He hung up and then delved into the details of the missed call. Pip's old cell phone had been disconnected six months after she left. It was unlikely someone was calling him from her office line, which only left the landline at her apartment.

His suspicions were confirmed. Someone had phoned him from her landline, and was still using it. Someone was in her apartment. Rossi was down the stairs and on the road in record time, hangover and thoughts of coffee temporarily forgotten. He was probably still over the drink-drive limit, but the ice-cold focus that hope gave him would have let him pass any roadside check bar the breathalyser. A voicemail came through as he was running down the stairs, and he played it in the car as he drove. He was none the wiser, the only thing the message had picked up before cutting off was the faint sound of breathing.

Rossi tore up the stairs to Pip's apartment, heedless of the noise he was making. Todd and Leon could moan at him later if he was wrong, heaven knew the pair of them had woken him up partying downstairs more than once when he'd been trying to sleep. He stopped on her landing, panting for breath and stomach turning over as he caught sight of a smeared bloodied handprint on the doorframe. The door itself was ajar, light from the living room spilling out into the hallway. There were no sounds of movement, but Rossi drew his weapon anyway.

He burst in, gun raised, only to halt paralysed in the doorway.

"Pip!" he breathed.

Pip lay sprawled on the floor in front of her sofa as if she'd tried to sit down and missed, then not had the energy to move. Her landline phone was next to one limp outstretched hand. The casual jeans and t-shirt she'd been wearing with trainers last time he'd seen her, had been replaced with desert khakis and a once-white vest top, paired with a pair of heavy duty tan coloured boots. A tatty grey jacket was draped haphazardly over one of her shoulders as if she'd passed out trying to take it off. All her clothing was covered in grease and oil, and a fair amount of blood. The jacket did nothing to hide the bruises that marred her arms and chest, in fact she was bruised everywhere he could see, other than her face. Pip made no indication she'd heard his intrusion.

Rossi quickly cleared the apartment room by room before holstering his weapon and rushing to Pip's side, desperately feeling for a pulse. He found one. It was faster than he'd like, but it was there.

She was alive. She was home.

It felt like a breath Rossi hadn't realised he'd been holding for a year was released, one long exhale of relief that loosened the tight belt of anxiety around his chest by at least a couple of notches.

He gave her a quick glance over, checking for serious injuries, but found nothing obvious. Her hands were bloody and raw as if she'd been in a fight, and she was covered in bruises, but physically at least, she looked more or less ok.

"I owe you one," Rossi muttered, eyes raised to God. "Thank you. You listened. I'll go to mass on Sunday, I promise."

Rossi rolled Pip over onto her back. No reaction, nothing. He half-stood to awkwardly dig in his pocket for his cell phone to call her an ambulance, while leaving one hand resting on her shoulder. To reassure himself that she was really there.

"Hang on, Pip," he muttered desperately. "Help's on the way…"

The tensing of the muscles beneath his hand was his only warning as he rooted in his pocket, having completely forgotten the landline Pip had been using.

Rossi unexpectedly found himself flung flat on his back with Pip looming above him, a crazed look in her eyes. One foot pinned the hand clutching his cell phone to the floor, his other arm was held fast by her thumb digging painfully into a pressure point deep in his bicep. Her other foot, clad in a steel toe cap boot, pressed uncomfortably against his testicles. The flurry of movement ended with a knife at his throat, the razor edge still turning slightly and biting with a sharp sting as the motion slowed. Then…then it stopped. Rossi froze, hardly daring to breathe.

He didn't try and resist. He was physically stronger but in his current position and with her hair-trigger reactions, resistance would probably get him neutered as well as his throat cut. Although not necessarily in that order.

Was it his imagination, or was the pressure on the cold metal threatening to open his jugular easing a little?

He swallowed carefully, hearing and feeling the blade rasp against the unmown stubble over his Adam's apple. It wasn't his imagination. There was definitely less force behind it.

"Pip?" he whispered. The blade was barely resting against him now. He tried again to get her attention. "Pip? It's me. It's Dave."

"Dave?" There was an odd slur to her voice, enough to make Rossi wonder if he'd missed a head injury when he'd checked her over.

"It's me," he assured her. "Put the knife down?" he asked, a little nervously. "Please?"

The blade was withdrawn entirely, along with the steel toecap, and Pip backed away. Rossi sat up quickly to catch her as she slumped sideways, dropping the knife as she fell. The explosion of effort had drained her of what little energy she possessed.

Rossi propped her up against him. "Pip, let me call you an ambulance," he said desperately.

"No," she mumbled. "Gotta get offa boat." She started to struggle weakly against him, trying to stand.

Rossi held her firmly. "Pip! No, Pip, it's ok. You're home. You're safe." He kept repeating that until it sank in. He knew the moment she'd heard him; Pip just sagged bonelessly, giving in. Rossi sat with her on the floor for a while, trying to let his hammering heart calm down. When his hands stopped shaking, he took a moment to run careful fingers over his throat to investigate the nick she'd given him. It was bleeding, but not much. He'd managed worse while shaving tired or hungover. Or both.

He took another look at Pip when she stirred once more, shifting uncomfortably against him, and changed his mind about how badly off she was. "You need a hospital."

"No hospitals. You can't tell anyone I'm back, not yet. I just need sleep. I'm exhausted." Pip rolled away from him, retrieving the knife and tucking it away in the holster at her back with casual ease that spoke of practice. She lumbered ponderously first to her knees, and then to her feet. Rossi scrambled up to steady her as she stumbled. Pip inhaled and snorted. "And a shower. I really need a shower."

He couldn't disagree, she stank; but her flippancy infuriated him, still reeling from the shock of firstly seeing her alive if not entirely well, then being held at knifepoint. Rossi let go of her and took a step back. "That's it?!" he cried. "You've been gone for nearly a year! JJ even told me you were dead! Don't I deserve some answers?"

"Not yet. Shower first." She started to move in the direction of the bathroom.

"You promised me. You promised me, that if you came back, you'd tell me."

His words halted her progress, as he'd intended. She hung her head.

"Yes," she whispered. "I did." She turned her head slowly to meet his eyes. "And I will. But I need to wash the aftermath off me before I can."

There was no expression on her face. That blankness was what Rossi would remember in years to come. Pip standing there completely void of emotion, everything buried so far down inside that nothing showed. She could have been a robot, if not for the shakiness in her knees that spoke of her exhaustion.

He was desperate for answers, but Rossi could only nod jerkily before turning away to close the still-open front door and head for the kitchen to satisfy the suddenly renewed urgency for caffeine.

He found half a pizza, furry with age, while absently hunting for milk in the fridge. The last time he'd spent the night at her apartment hadn't been long enough ago for that to happen surely? Rossi searched his memory. That had been...what case? San Diego, that was it. The college stalker he'd shot dead. Strauss had been all over them after Emily's supposed death and knowing what he knew, he'd wanted an escape from the scrutiny. Pip's apartment had served as a bolt hole for times like that more than once since she'd left. He'd meant to come back for the pizza, but had obviously forgotten. His memory was shot to shit lately.

Nearly a month. A month since he'd been back to self-flagellate over losing Pip. There was no milk, even if there had been, it would be well out of date by now. He didn't fancy drinking it black on top of the whisky, and after some time spent searching her cupboards, found the pot of emergency powdered creamer he knew was in there somewhere. That would do. He dumped a load into a mug and shook a measure of coffee into her machine from the brand new packet he'd bought same night as the pizza. Fuck the spoon; he'd measure it by eye. If it was a bit too strong, well, maybe that was for the best, given what he'd done to end up falling into bed fully-clothed. Again.

Pip emerged from the bathroom about half an hour later, wrapped in a towel and carrying her knife holsters. She slipped into the bedroom and returned minutes later, towel around her head and dressed simply in a long t-shirt and leggings. By then, Rossi was on his third mug and both his temper and his hangover had abated some. They looked at each other awkwardly, for the first time in their friendship, neither of them knew what to say.

Eventually Pip flopped down next to him on the sofa, casually shedding the towel and throwing it in the direction of the beanbag. She missed.

"Typical," she huffed. "Ooh, I'm going to be stiff as a surfboard tomorrow." She sighed happily, her eyes closing as she lounged back. "Aah, I missed this."

"What? Your sofa? Your apartment? Virginia? What did you miss, Pip?" he asked, sharper than he'd meant to.

The hangover had definitely eased off, but maybe his temper had only been biding its time. He wanted to ask if she'd missed him too, but that was only one more elephant of the herd currently crammed into the room with them.

"Safety." That instantly halted the re-emergence of his anger in its tracks.

Pip reached for his hand and smiled when she found it, eyes still closed. "I kep' fightin'. Pills so it wouldn' hurt, pills to keep me awake." Pip was barely whispering now, Rossi had to lean close to hear her. "Have t' fight, have t'get home. Home to Dave where i's safe…"

"Pip?" Rossi shook her shoulder. "Pip!"

"Lemme sleep," she mumbled. "Jus' coupla hours. Then I'll 'splain everythin'."

He couldn't rouse her again. Rossi sighed in frustration and stood to lay Pip down on the sofa, covering her with the blanket that lived over the back of it. He rearranged the cushions under her head, trying not to look too closely at the bruising and new scars that littered her arms. One in particular caught his attention, a wide streak of fresh scar tissue at the top of her left arm, the skin still pink and new. Rossi traced it gently with his fingers, feeling the furrow of the wound. Gunshot, and it looked like she'd stitched it herself. A glancing hit, but a gunshot wound nonetheless. As if she didn't have enough of those already.

He stood there, looking down at her. She was a mess, no doubt, but she had called him. Not her handlers, not an ambulance. Him. He shivered, suddenly cold, his heart pounding. She'd been through hell and she'd called him, and he'd barely given her a chance to breathe before demanding answers.

Rossi went to make more coffee. He would let Pip sleep for the two hours she'd asked for, under his close scrutiny. If her condition worsened, he'd call an ambulance and she could shout at him later. If it didn't...well, he'd see where that would take him.

On his way back into the living room, Rossi spotted her well-worn leather backpack lying carelessly by the door and picked it up. He'd missed it on his way in, more concerned about Pip. He fought a brief dispute with his morals, before setting down his coffee and yanking the bag open. Pawing through a friend's belongings without permission was distasteful, but it had to be done. Pip had talked about pills.

As uncomfortable as he felt doing it, Pip's bag was a guide to what her life had been like while she'd been away. Lying on top as if she'd only taken it off when she dropped the bag down, was a solitary leather glove. Obviously one of a pair, but the other was nowhere to be seen. Rossi turned it over in his hands, examining it carefully. Fingerless, but with what felt like a padded metal strip embedded across the knuckles. More subtle than knuckledusters, but probably just as effective. The state of her hands made more sense now. Presumably, Pip had lost the other glove in a scuffle and fought on just wearing one.

In the top of the backpack, he found the expected dirty clothes; Rossi simply dumped them straight in the washer and set it going while avoiding looking too closely at the bloodstains. It would be a miracle if they washed out, but apparently, miracles were in season at the moment. Worth a try, in any case.

There was a lone 9mm bullet and a shell casing from a .22 rifle round in amongst the clothing. He put them carefully to one side, knowing Pip wouldn't have kept them unless she had a reason.

Under the laundry, was a small wash kit along with a tiny towel. Underneath that, a neat flint and steel set wrapped in a little leather purse with a selection of lockpicks, and a whetstone for her knives. To which there was a new addition, tucked vertically down the inside of the bag. Longer than the pair he was familiar with and slightly curved, it had wicked serrations along one edge and sharp points set just above the hilt. A deep gutter ran the length of the blade. It was the most evil-looking knife Rossi had seen in a long time. He re-sheathed it carefully and set it to one side with a shudder.

But there were no pills.

Over years, random detritus pooled at the bottom of most well-travelled bags. Perhaps the pills had slipped down there too. Rossi turned the backpack upside down on the coffee table to see what Pip's collection of oddments was.

It was fairly eclectic to say the least. A seashell. Two condoms and the wrapper for a third. Half a biscuit, well-aged and covered in lint – the other half probably made up part of the greyish dust and grit that now coated everything on the table. A used book of waterproof matches. A small lump of rock that looked to have a thin vein of gold running through it. A .308 shell casing threaded onto a loop of leather, with an apple etched on the side. A red biro that looked like she'd stolen it from his desk – he had lost one around the time she'd gone, damned if he knew how she'd managed that. It was probably the one she'd written her note to him with. A sterile wipe and a packet that had once contained nylon sutures. A length of fishing line and a wire saw. Two coins of unrecognisable denomination or currency. A handful of paperclips intertwined around a couple of safety pins and a broken lockpick. No pills.

Rossi swept the oddments into a heap and fetched a cloth to wipe up the gritty grey stuff that now covered everything, including his coffee. The ruined beverage went down the sink, and he set the machine going on a fresh round, leaving it to brew while he hung up her discarded towel.

Pip stirred as he sat down again. So much for two hours, she'd barely been out for forty-five minutes.

"Hey," she mumbled, stretching a little. Assessing hazel eyes flickered over his face and down to his crumpled clothing. "You look like shit."

"Says she," retorted Rossi sharply, not in the mood to spar with her.

Pip sat up, looking around at the neat piles of her kit laid out on the table. Her slow survey ended back at his face, and Rossi just returned her stare. He hadn't found anything, but he wasn't sorry he'd looked.

Pip cocked her head as if listening to an internal debate, then nodded as consensus was achieved. "In the lining between the outer and the inner pocket."

"Huh?" he asked stupidly.

"The codeine. That's what you're looking for, isn't it?" Pip pointed to her backpack, next to his feet. "Take it. Please. What little is left is in a hidden pouch in the lining between the outer and inner sections of the bag. Get it as far away from me as possible."

"How long for?" he asked, already rummaging. He knew what to ask, she'd told him years ago. Other things could wait. "How much?"

"Three days. Two of those about every five hours or so. Not enough that I'll need intervention, but enough to ruin years of good work. For three days, I've lived on caffeine, adrenaline," Pip grimaced, "and lots of codeine. I jumped off the wagon and then stood in front of it so it so it could run me down. I had to. I had to stay awake, had to keep fighting." She held up her hands. The knuckles, now clean, looked really sore, her left worse than her right. "Nothing's broken, but it fucking felt like it."

Rossi found the elusive pills and pocketed them for safekeeping. The chill he'd felt earlier returned with a vengeance and he cradled his mug close to his body as if trying to absorb the heat directly.

"Had to keep them off me somehow," she muttered quietly.

Rossi's head jerked up at her words, his hand tensing uneasily around his coffee. It was bad enough knowing that she'd been shot at, that she'd again resorted to drugs to get by. If she'd been raped too, he was liable to break something.

"Who?" he asked impatiently. "Pip, try straight answers for once. Start at the beginning."

"The beginning? That bit was only the beginning of the end. I was nearly home," snorted Pip, before taking a deep breath. "I got myself disavowed - that's why you can't tell anyone I'm home. So, I had to make my own way out. Luckily, I still have some contacts in the area, so I exchanged my rifle for passage north, and my handgun to get across the Caspian and through into Turkey. Fed a sob story to a young American couple holidaying on a cruise ship docked in Istanbul and they smuggled me aboard. I got a relatively comfortable week's sail across the ocean to Miami."

Pip laughed humourlessly. "Figured I'd be safe once I hit the US, but actually, that's when the trouble started. I had no papers, no money, no ID and a price on my head, so I had to make my own way back from Florida. I figured the easiest way was by sea, so I hopped a car transporter bound for Norfolk, thinking I'd hitch from there. Trouble was, I'd got too comfortable on the cruise liner. I let my guard down, and I was discovered by two of the engineers on the last day before we made port. They wanted payment, and so did every guy who picked me up on the highway between Norfolk and Quantico. I've alternated between fighting back and fighting to stay awake ever since I landed Stateside."

Rossi's blood ran even colder as he processed what she meant. "Oh, God…Did anyone…?" He couldn't bring himself to complete the sentence.

Pip shook her head and offered him a reassuring smile when Rossi breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Just a crappy end to add to a crappy year. If I never see sand again, it will be too soon. And the spiders…" Pip shuddered. "Huge, and fucking armoured. And they could run. Fuck me, could they run."

"You think you've had a crappy year?" shot Rossi irritably. "Wasn't exactly roses here either. JJ told me you were dead."

"Is that why you're drinking too much?" she asked reprovingly. "Take it from an addict, Dave, it doesn't work."

"I fucking know that," he spat sharply. "You think I don't know that by now?" He scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed. "Why did JJ think you were dead?" He knew that JJ would not have mislead him deliberately, but her information had come from somewhere, and it had been faulty.

"I had an opportunity to settle an old score," replied Pip grimly before pausing. "There were concerns about a leak in an information hunt and my objectives were related to both angles of concern," she said slowly, obviously trying to tell him everything and yet nothing at the same time. "I had two tasks: hunting for the leak and protecting someone. I watched, and I waited. My protection target came and went in a fairly regular pattern, but then I had a chance…my uh, protectee was out of the area unexpectedly after having just got back, so I took off for a while. He won't rape any more young boys," she added smugly.

Rossi shuddered.

"I missed several check-ins and when I came back," Pip shrugged, "I didn't correct the assumption that had been made, because it made my job easier. I stayed out of communication for the rest of the trip." Her eyes slid sideways, away from him. "I hope she forgives me for that," she muttered, a frown forming.

Never mind him and what JJ's notification had done to him. Rossi couldn't help feeling a little put out that Pip wanted forgiveness from JJ, but not from him.

"I was back in place before my safekeeping objective returned from wherever they'd been," continued Pip after a moment's contemplation. "The hunt for the leak ramped up and a party drove out into the desert, where it was harder for me to follow. There was an IED attack and an ambush, something I should have known about and didn't. Maybe it's because I skipped out and missed something, maybe not. Either way, there were casualties." Pip slowly rubbed her hand over the fresh scar on her arm as if remembering how she'd come by the wound.

"I nearly lost my charge, the more important of the two objectives, to my mind at least. They eventually left safely, if not entirely unharmed. I stayed behind and did a little investigating of my own, to find the culprits." Pip reached forward to pick up the .22 shell case from the coffee table, bouncing it casually in her hand.

"This?" she said, holding it out in her hand for him to see. "This is a receipt for a debt I took it upon myself to pay. I never found the man in charge, he was long gone, but I got his second in command. The guy who planted the IEDs that blew up the convoy. I blew out his knees to stop him running, then shot his balls off at close range with a hollow point round."

Rossi cringed in sympathetic pain and clutched himself defensively. "Bloody hell," he muttered, nauseated at how calmly Pip had described what she'd done.

Pip snorted. "His last minutes on this earth were exactly that. Trust me when I say it was justice."

Still with his hands over his crotch, Rossi shivered at the darkness in her voice. He killed in the line of duty, and so had Pip in the course of both her careers. Regardless of the situation, taking a human life always left a mark. Now, Pip was talking about cold-blooded premeditated murder, first of a paedophile, then of a conspirator in an explosion. Instead of the expected horror, all Rossi could sense from her was a bleak satisfaction that came from fulfilling a thirst for vengeance. He'd interviewed serial killers more affected by their actions.

"His death was what finally got all my lifelines cut," she continued. "He gave me some information, in between the screaming. I never got a name, he died too quickly for that, but he told me there was someone else calling the shots. One of ours. The leak was from the inside. I tried to make contact, but the sat phone number I'd been given was disconnected, the safe house obliterated. I was on my own. Burned, abandoned, for that shred of information. Somehow, someone knew what I'd found and had me cut off. It's taken me over a month to get home."

It was a lot to take in. "How come I only heard from you the once?" asked Rossi, looking for a way out of discussing blood and the lives she had taken; if only because her monotone was chilling, and he couldn't take it anymore. "I spent months waiting, hoping. I mourned you."

"I couldn't," she replied heavily. "I wanted to, but I couldn't. I flew out with a deployment of marines, travelled as one of them. When I took my leave of the squad I'd used as camouflage, I asked one to get that sketch to an Agent Afloat, and to tell them to get it back to headquarters. I knew it would get to you eventually. After that, I had no opportunities that wouldn't have blown my cover and got me killed."

"Why you?" That was the biggest question. The one he'd asked the night she left.

Pip gave him a sad sort of smile. "Actually, I already told you, in a way. I've been there before, that area. Twice actually, although first time I was just another marine passing through. Second time was the missile strike I told you about. For what they wanted…they needed someone who knew the place, and was known there, for the wrong reasons. A rumour here, a whisper there, and suddenly everyone around me was fighting each other for an opportunity to take my head. All the time they were doing that, there was a chance they'd let something slip." She grimaced. "I was the bait, and you know what often happens to bait when you're catching big fish."

Rossi nodded. The fish might get caught, but the bait was swallowed up first.

"That's why JJ assumed I was dead, it wasn't exactly out of the realms of possibility and there was no reason anyone knew for me to stay out of contact." Pip glanced over at him, unease clear. "There. That's the entire story, more or less; even if I did tell it out of sequence. I promised you, and I've honoured that, but you should know I've just committed treason by telling you, and you've committed treason by listening."

"We crossed that line when you phoned me the night you left," retorted Rossi. "Pip…" He reached for her, almost withdrawing when he felt her tense under his hand, much as she'd done earlier. Rossi persevered, finally pulling her to him.

"I missed you," he whispered in her ear around the lump in his throat. "God, Pip, I missed you so much."

"I missed you too," she replied, and they stayed there, clutching each other until exhaustion took them.