Sam wakes up that morning surprisingly peacefully, but still extremely tired. It doesn't take long for the smell of coffee to lure him from his bed and into the kitchen, not even bothering to tame his "bead-head" or put on anything more than a random shirt and pants. He trudges along to the kitchen, waking up more and more with each step. He walks along past the door leading to the range, thinking he heard Dean mumbling in there but choosing to ignore it until he gets a cup of coffee.

Mug in hand he starts pouring from the pot, but instantly drops it to the floor with a loud crash when he hears the indistinguishable sound of a gun firing multiple times followed by Dean screaming at someone. He jolts up, fully alert and starts running toward where he heard the shot come from. "DEAN!"

He reaches the door and opens it forcefully, so forcefully it easily could've come off of his hinges if it wasn't for the super-duty quality of every part of the bunker. The tension that was building visibly relaxes when when he sees that Dean just got a little too caught up in the heat of the moment during some target practice. On the contrary, Dean whips around pointing the gun at Sam in surprise. Out of reflex, Sam reaches for his gun, but realizes that he never brought it from his room. Silently cursing at himself for the mistake, he raises his hands up in surrender to calm Dean down, and it seems to work. Dean finally has a moment of clarity to figure out exactly what's happening and puts the gun down. "Sam? What the hell are you doing here? I could've shot you!"

Sam takes a moment, realizing what he meant and what could've happened, but dismisses it with a slight shrug. "Honestly, that thought hadn't occurred to me. I just heard a gun and you shouting so I came running."

Dean shakes his head at his brother's sudden stupidity. En route to putting his hands in his face he notices Sam's feet. "Goddammit Sammy, what'd you do getting over here that you'd cut up your feet that bad?" He takes a closer look for a second. "Shit, is that glass? And correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think feet are supposed to be bright red."

The coffee pot and mug. With the adrenaline and fear wearing off, Sam finally realizes what he did getting to Dean and doubles over in pain. "Dean... need your help. Get the first aid kit. Hurry." He hobbles over to the nearest table, which happens to be all the way over in the library. Dean meets him there, first aid kit in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other.

Dean sits down at the next seat over and gestures for Sam to put his foot on his lap so he can better reach it. He pulls out the tweezers and begins picking out the shards of glass. As he reaches for the biggest shard, they both hiss: Sam from actual pain and Dean from sympathy pain. "That's gonna need stitches. I can do it but you're better at it. Take your pick."

"I can do it." Pulling his foot back to within his reach, he hisses in pain before putting it back on his lap. "Nope, can't do it."

Not needing anything more from him, Dean takes out the dental floss and gets to work, sewing the cuts closed as gently as he can and finishing them off by pouring whiskey over them. Sam audibly hisses at the burning sensation and Dean mutters his apologies.

After all of the burns and glass are attended to, Dean wraps some gauze around Sam's foot for extra protection. "That'll do it. Be careful next time. You're slacking, Sammy."

Both brothers get up and return to what they were doing: Sam eating breakfast (after grabbing his gun) and Dean turning FBI agents into swiss cheese at the range. Sam finally finishes his cup of coffee, a jolt of energy keeping him alert. So, when the front door to the bunker is unlocked and opened, Sam runs over, armed and ready to fire. His grip relaxes when he is finally able to make out a face.

"What's up bitches?" The familiar red-head walks into the bunker, same as before. She drops her bags and goes to hug Sam.

"Hey Charlie! You're back from Oz?" He asks, still unsure of the exact situation at hand.

She nods. "Yep, all's good there. So... What've you guys been up to since I left? And where's Dean?"

Sam takes a deep breath, trying to figure out where to start. "So much you have no idea. Dean's at the range, we can swap stories once he gets back. Seems like he had some steam to blow off."

"Sounds good." She says, snaking past Sam and heading toward the range. He should know by now that I don't have the patience for that. She reaches the door and swiftly pushes it open, once again scaring the shit out of Dean in the middle of target practice.

"Seriously you too? Can anyone knock or open a door normally anymore or is it just me?" Dean shouts out, half serious and half jokingly.

"Hey Dean." She says, walking up to hug him and talk. "How ya been? Wait, save it. Sam said if you come out of here we can swap stories." She says, a happy and excited grin spreading across her face.

"No offense, but you're not gonna want to know what went on after you left. It's not pretty by any means."

She shrugs. "Isn't it always?" She says, eyeing the thoroughly abused targets. "Anyways, you'll want to hear mine."

JJ looks at Reid as if he had just grown a second head. "What do you mean they wanted to get caught? What criminal in their right mind wants to get caught?"

"Well we've seen it before haven't we? Serial killers or other criminals that just get tired of the chase, constantly looking over their shoulder, not knowing who to trust. Maybe they're just tired of running." Reid replies, as if it was a normal thought to have at the moment.

Rossi has another idea. "Choosing when and how you get caught just to escape every time is the ultimate form of power to criminals, is it not?"

A realization strikes Reid, one that he hates to admit. Rossi was right and his guess was far from correct. "He's right. Maybe this isn't for a lack of will to go on but for a deeper desire to have more control. Feel more powerful, and therefore better and smarter than the people who are supposed to control you. They're not tired of the chase, they want a challenge, that's if they actually did want to get arrested all of these times."

Morgan has another theory. "What if it's just them devolving over a long period of time?"

Prentiss looks at him, not fully believing that. "But usually devolution is rapid, right? I don't think ten years qualifies as rapid by any means. Plus, would devolving criminals be able to escape imprisonment every time? I agree with Rossi and Reid on this one."

Not necessarily..." Reid starts, his brain freshly stimulated and spitting out ideas left and right. "Maybe it's a mixture of the two. You see, devolution by definition is descent or degeneration to a lower or worse state. We commonly think of devolution as rapid because that's the most common thing and easiest to associate with, but there are rare cases where the devolution does, in fact, happen slowly. But when it hit and Dean got arrested in 2005, maybe it triggered a psychological response that subconsciously made him love the attention and thrill of escaping the police and the sense of power and authority it gave him. A chain reaction, one triggers the other." Reid finishes triumphantly, leaving the room dumbfounded for a few seconds, similar to what he usually achieves during an investigation.

Hotch sits silently for some time, absorbing everything. Weighing the probability of each conjecture being correct and, more importantly, how that specific piece of information benefits the investigation. While rare, the scenario Reid described does happen and seems very likely to be what happened. But, mistakes in cases such as these are fatal and there have been too many so far. Not just on the behalf of his team, or the entire bureau. No, these mistakes have been made by everyone that had ever dealt with these men. Simply thinking of all of the mind games played over the years made his blood boil. He couldn't take this anymore. The stress and pressure added to the seemingly impossible nature of this task pushed his final button and pushed him past the edge of calm and caused him to land in the realm of anger and frustration.

"We're going to need more than just conjecture here! We have a week to arrest two of the most clever and dangerous criminals of all time and all we're doing is sitting around throwing around guesses! Doesn't this concern anyone else besides me?"

The entire team turns to look at Hotch with complete confusion. This wasn't the man they knew. Morgan, being the natural people-pleaser, puts a hand up in the air in an attempt to calm him down. "Hotch, it's okay. We can figure this out, we always do."

Hotch looks up with an expression on his face that the team had never seen before that day, not even when Haley died. It was a look of defeat. "Don't you see? We have nothing to go on because there is nothing concrete to go on. Let's face it, Sam and Dean Winchester cannot be profiled."

At that exact moment, dead silence fell upon not just that conference room, but the entire police department. Everyone was thinking the exact same thought: Aaron Hotchner had given up?

But, before anyone could move or say anything, he raises his right pointer finger in protest. "But, that does not mean that our job is over. There are other methods not normally used by the BAU that will probably work better."

Cracking these men will be quite possibly the hardest task this unit has ever taken on, but that doesn't mean that they can't do it. Not yet at least.

Sam, Dean and Charlie sit around that same table that Dean patched Sam up at just that morning. They don't think about it, but so much of their lives within these last few years have taken place at this very table. The countless memories, drunken and sober, that happened at this table still replay occasionally in their heads; not to mention all of the late nights spent researching. The good memories usually being drunken conversations pieced together the next morning over coffee, the bad ones unsuccessfully shooed away. Dean sitting at the table when they first moved in, practically crying at the impact of the trials on Sam while he was hiding away in his room trying to recover. Sam the day Metatron stabbed Dean, crying and smashing his fists so hard into the wood that he was amazed it didn't break on the spot. Over the years Sam and Dean have lived at the bunker, this table has been where their lives have happened.

Today, luckily, contained at least one good memory at the table. There were a few beers left over from the previous night, but those were long gone between the three of them. Charlie talks of her adventure in Oz: fighting the war and winning. Sam, being the book lover of the two brothers, found the differences between the books and reality fascinating, while Dean couldn't care less. Truthfully, that was where the alcohol went. "... so yeah, that's what happened in Oz. Your turn!"

Sam and Dean both huff, not quite knowing where to start: angels, demons, mark of Cain, Metatron, Abbadon, heaven, hell? The silent conversation between Sam and Dean goes on for a while, Charlie sitting there awkwardly not knowing what they're saying.

Sam raises his eyebrows and nudges his head at Dean. Go on, start.

Dean gives an angry and confused look directed toward Sam. What? Why me? You're the chatty one right now.

Sam Winchester bitchface. Oh I don't know, maybe because you stuffed an angel inside me at the point in time that we should start at?

Dean Winchester bitchface. Seriously? You're giving me that excuse again? I told you I'm sorry!

Sam Winchester bitchface.

Dean scowls at Sam. Fine. I'll start. "So remember when Sam was acting really weird the last time you were over here?"

She nods. "Yeah. What was up with that?"

Dean looks down, rubbing his eyes. It's obvious he regrets his decisions, but that still doesn't change things and he knows it. "Well that was because I had an angel inside him to heal him after he almost died in the trials."

Charlie stares at him, wide-eyed. "Is that how I was brought back to life?"

Sam looks up. "What? You died?"

Charlie looks over to Dean. "You never told him? Seriously?!"

Feeling a bit too confronted, he breaks it up. "So what? There's a lot that you guys don't know that you probably should. Hell, I'm sure there's a lot that I should know about that I don't, so I guess it's good that we're doing this now." So, for the next hour or so, Dean talks about the adventures they've had in the past year: the good, the bad, and the just plain hilarious. They laughed together reliving the time Dean could communicate with animals and practically became a dog. Laughed even harder at Sam's yoga shorts. They cried at the loss of Kevin, even though Charlie never even met him.

"He seems like a cool kid. We'd probably get along, maybe even be best friends!"

She was in complete awe of the mysterious Mark of Cain and the Knights of Hell. Her sexuality peeked through slightly while listening to Abbadon stories, but Sam and Dean chose to ignore those actions for the moment. She couldn't help but feel some sympathy for Castiel with his problems in heaven, and then she was plain infuriated when it came to Metatron; and this was before they had said that Metatron killed Dean.

The night at the homeless compound was a story that took both Sam and Dean to tell, neither could retell the story without tearing up, so they rotated. Sam tells of the events leading to it and of the fight. The moment the angel blade penetrates Dean's skin is the moment that Dean has to take over, from what he recollected and from what Sam told him afterwards, all leading up to when he became a demon.

Charlie kept her involvement minimal, more story less talking. There were times when she couldn't control herself, and this was one of them. As Dean describes the feeling of transforming into a demon, she can't help but mutter a soft "Holy shit."

"The power... the feeling that you're invincible, it's like nothing I'd ever experienced. The literal liquid bravery just coursing through your veins making you so much stronger than you ever thought possible. There's nothing else like it, and I had loved every minute of it."