A/N: Inspiration drawn from the amazing 'Our Father's Dust' by G. R. Jensen. Read it!

Even with all of the sounds of the hospital, Aaron Hotchner feels like the entire world is silent. All he can hear is the nurse's voice echoing in his ears, the standard I'm So Sorry For Your Loss speech. Everything else is silent.

Things slowly begin to come back to him; the first thing that he hears is a wild, keening sound, not from Garcia—he would have expected that—but from JJ; she's sobbing like she's in some kind of terrible physical pain, and, for all he knows, she is; God knows that he is.