A/N – Thank you so much for your support with this second story. A shameless promotion: Make sure you check out my other story if you haven't. It is lighter but in time will have its own moments too! ;)

I plan to make this story darker in future chapters – surprisingly that is possible. I would love to know what you all think of that...it would mean I would have to up the rating for safety! Thoughts? Please read and comment!

I dedicate this chapter to my partner in crime, Smurf1001, who is the reason my own heart feels happy! :) Check out her work!

The flashback is from Season Two - Episode 21 - all credit for that goes to Criminal Minds! :)

"You killed my daughter. You killed my baby girl. You're a murderer! MUDERER!...MUDERER!...MURDERER!"

The words echo around and around in Emily's head as she drove through the deserted streets towards her apartment. Luckily she had driven the route from the landing strip to her home so many times that she was on autopilot. How she managed to stop correctly at each one of the stop lights is beyond her. Yet she was grateful she had without killing anyone else. Her first mission had been completed: let none of her team-mates notice she was cracking into a million tiny pieces. She was finally on her way home.

She was a zombie driving a car. No, this feeling was worse than a zombie. She wished she felt like a zombie. Maybe being dead would be the only way to end this. If she was dead, she wouldn't feel this pain in her heart. A pain impossible to describe. It wasn't a physical pain. She had experienced that hundreds of times on the job – a raid gone wrong, an interview turned into an unsuspected moment with an unsub. It wasn't the pain of a bang to the head or violent attack. It was beyond that, something that would be hard to heal. Something she doubted could ever be healed. Something bed rest or a hospital stay couldn't heal. It wasn't the pain of a heart-attack or heart-burn yet her heart ached. Her heart ached like an emotionally charged, gut-wrenching, vomit-inducing, soul-stabbing poison had been injected directly into it's muscle slowly crushing it with every beat. Every beat that echoed one word over and over again. Every beat that pumped that one word around her body through every blood vessel, down every capillary until it engulfed her entire body. MURDERER!

She had finally got that answer to that one question that always haunted her. That one question that no-one could answer.

Flashback

Emily is sitting on the jet looking glum out of the window. Derek notices and comes over to check she is alright.

"What's up?" Derek asks.

"Bobbi Baird asked me a question that is sticking with me." The brunette replies. Derek waits for her to continue but she doesnt.

"What was it?"

"She asked me how they could do it. How those men could hunt and kill people in the woods." Derek leans back and thinks for a moment.

"What did you tell her?"

"That they don't think like we do...but the truth is that we do think like them." She looks down at her hand.

"Yeah, we do because it's our job. We need to know how it feels." She isn't satisfied with his answer.

"We hunt these people every day. The question is how different are we... us and them?" The question is left hanging as a silence takes over the jet.

The answer was they weren't different. Just like that mother had shouted at her. She was a murderer, just like all those she had spent her life trying to stop.