Never act until you have clearly answered the question: What happens if I do nothing?

- Robert Brault

This is a nightmare from which JJ cannot awake.

When she sleeps, it comes to her, haunting her like ghosts. Except ghosts are proof that someone was here once. All she has is an empty echo - proof that Henry is gone. In her dreams, JJ jerks awake in the middle of the night, certain that something is wrong. Henry's red racecar bed with the CARS sheets is empty. The sheets are crumpled. His favorite blanket is left behind.

Henry's bed is named Lightning McQueen, after the car in the Pixar film. Her son had an unnatural love for his own bed and he would never leave his blanket behind. Even in her dream, JJ knows this, and the truth settles in her gut like a series of cold, hard stones.

In the dreams, JJ always searches. First for Henry, and then for Will, who is always inexplicably missing, too. Where the hell is he? She rushes from room to room. She calls Henry's name, but he doesn't come.

The terror closing her throat is the last thing she feels before she jerks awake. For a split second, relief fills her. Long enough to think, it's just a dream, and then be cruelly reminded that, no, it's not. Because just about then, her eyes focus on the nightstand, where the neatly-written list of stipulations sits.

This is a rare case, because she knows exactly who took her son. JJ knows exactly how dangerous he is. And she has no doubt that if she does not follow his instructions to the letter, she will never see her son again.

She knows because she dated him. This loser, back in college. She hadn't thought he'd been a loser at first. She'd thought he was her saving grace. Somebody to love her and care about her and not just her Mom and Dad, after they all lost her sister, Janet. She had only been eleven. Seven years later as a college freshman, she had met him after a soccer game. He made her feel so special. So cared about. So valued. He had not known Janet. In fact he never even knew JJ's first name for the entire first month. As head-over-heels as she was for him, she was instinctually careful. She had not wanted to reveal important things about herself until she was sure this was the real thing. Then, they had kissed. Then, he'd said, "I love you" and meant it.

Slowly, she had opened up. He treated her so gently when she needed it, but was not afraid to rough-house, either. And he was romantic. When Titanic came out, he went to see it with her in theatres. He even cried, while she sat dry-eyed, confusing the emergency flares for fireworks. Why, she had wondered, would they celebrate mass death like this? After the movie, over burgers and salads, he had explained. She nodded, but could not get the image of the strings section playing jaunty numbers while the ship went down.

That night was the first time he hit her. He wanted to go to bed. She had to study. JJ struggled in her general psych class on her best day. In fact, the only thing she learned so far, taking the quizzes about depression and anxiety levels, was that she was really screwed up from losing her sister, and could probably benefit from free counseling services on campus. She still hadn't mustered the courage to go. And then there were the tests. The vocabulary that would not stay in her head no matter how hard she tried to force it to stay there.

She remembered staring up at him in shock. She remembered planting her hands in his chest and shoving him, shirtless, out into the hall. She remembered locking him out, her heart pounding in her chest. She remembered how casually he'd done it, and she had vowed to never let it happen again.

But it had. Of course it had. He apologized, said it was a mistake. He was tired. She made him crazy. There was a party the next weekend and she hadn't wanted to show up alone and deal with questions from the other girls on the team. So she said she forgave him. There wasn't even a mark left behind, so it couldn't have been that bad, right? Still, she swore to him that if he did it again, that was it. They were done. She'd be gone. He'd never see her again.

It wasn't. They never showed up at the party. After the game, he insisted they return to the apartment. Somehow, she agreed. Somehow, she ended up in a huge fight with him over something stupid. He threatened to drive them off the road. Told her all the ways he could overpower her. She stared back at him, refusing to be moved by his threats. By the time they were home, it was as if nothing happened.

Two months later, she woke up in the middle of the night with a knife pressed against her throat. Scream, and she'd die, she knew. So she kept quiet. Every time she tried to excuse herself he refused to allow it. She was in the apartment for hours. She missed a day of classes as he beat her, tormented her with secrets she had confided in him. It was just by chance that someone came to the door unexpectedly. By then, she was bruised and bleeding. He went out a window and she never answered the door.

Instead, she packed everything she could into her backpack, got in her car, and drove. She transferred to another school and never looked back. Even all these years later, it was not the beating that scared her, it's the promise he had whispered in her ear, as the blade pressed against her throat.

"If I can't have you…nobody will…"

She blinks away the tears that are always present. Swallows back the lump in her throat. Then, she focuses on Will's side of the bed. That's empty, too. An empty bottle sits open and unashamed, on his nightstand. His jeans lay, discarded, on the floor. She remembers commenting on his drinking before, when they first met. He'd dismissed her concerns, saying it was a cultural thing. She wonders bitterly, what he might say now. Now that their son is missing. Now that he was stolen from their house on Will's watch, while she was at work. It's too terrible to imagine, so JJ doesn't try to conjure it.

She remembers the call at work. It was early. Six or seven o'clock when Will called, desperate. Telling her Henry was gone. That someone had taken him. She had rushed home, and by then, there was the note in familiar handwriting from her past.

Involve the police and you will never see him again. Do not search for me. I know exactly where you are. I have always known. Remember. If I can't have you…nobody will…

She holds her necklace and tries to breathe. She will go to work tomorrow. She will act like everything is fine. She will join her team in their profiling duties, so that this one thing is right with her world. In her free moments, she'll do what is demanded of her by him. But she will do it quietly. No one will know. This is her fight.

This is her fault.

So, Rossi's offer, when it comes, is perfect.

She is not lying when she tells him that she has done nothing but consider it, and unlike Hotch, Rossi does not question what she is doing in the office at 2 AM. He buys her aloof answer.

Hotch would have pressed. He would have asked how she was doing. How Will and Henry were doing? What was she really doing showing up at the BAU so late at night?

But they are desperate, it seems, for some stability. For something. She will give them that. But she hopes that they don't push. She cannot handle pushing. She hopes, already, that she does not have to work another case involving a missing child. It would split her loyalties as a mother.

It would break her heart.

JJ shakes her head and gets up. She can't blame Will. He blames himself enough, as it is. In fact, it didn't take long to realize there was nothing she could do to convince him that this wasn't his fault. He had fallen completely apart. When he wasn't out drinking, he was home drinking. When he wasn't drinking, he was sleeping for obscene amounts of time. JJ envied the depression that allowed him to escape from this nightmare, stealing his consciousness and replacing it with peaceful blackness. They had started snapping at one another. Now, they barely speak. She cannot control what he does. Neither can she waste these hours searching local bars for her husband.

She needs sleep.

She's going back to the BAU tomorrow.

Soundlessly, JJ crawls into her son's room. Into Lightning McQueen and his soft sheets. She lays her head on the tiny pillow. Clutches the blanket. Imagines just for a second, that Henry is here to put her arm around. Because this is the only way she can sleep. This is the only way she will be able to function.

She imagines the last time they were able to lie like this and cuddle.

It was a rare thing, like a gift. Because Henry, who never complained about going to bed, who never got up to wander, had woken up crying.

When JJ went in to check on him, she ended up curled around him in the tiny bed. Henry had fallen asleep clutching her hand in his small one. With his other hand, he grasped the necklace she sometimes wore. Janet's necklace. It had made her throat swell with emotion. Because it was something he had, no doubt, seen her do when she was upset and needed to ground herself. Sometimes, even if she was not wearing it, she would fist her own hand in front of her chest, in the place it would hang.

Each time JJ had tried to disentangle herself from her son's grip, he had held on tighter, whimpering in his sleep. So she had stayed with him all night. Thank God, she had stayed with him…

As her eyes drift closed a single thought circles in her mind, closing her throat, choking her…

Had he known this was coming?