Author: Ren Kayashima

Genre: Family/ Mystery

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Alas my top secret mission to steal the rights to Criminal Minds failed. At the last minute my repel line broke and I was arrested for trespassing on ABC ground. If you would like to help me with bail money…

Shout Outs: Dyallon: Here you go the shout outs are back. I kind of missed writing them. I just am so eager to get a chapter out.

Kimd33: You'll slowly start to find out what's going on with Rori. There are several reasons, but only one is the main plotline.

P95000: I can't comment on some of the event that are about to play out, but they're important to the plotline.

Booksandmusic97: I have a Facebook and a twitter that always has my chapters posted on it. If you aren't getting alerts feel free to try those. If not you can let me know if you want a PM every time it's posted.

Nebula2: Thanks for talking with me about the last chapter, and I hope you enjoy this one. It's not 'fluffy', but it's important for later chapters. Thanks for telling me what you know about fishing.

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Chapter Four:

July 16th, 2011

Dave sat quietly in the driver's seat of his SUV. The radio had been turned off two hours ago, and not a sound had come from the teen sleeping in the passenger seat. Dave slid a glance over to Rori momentarily. Out of habit, he would check to make sure she was all right. Too much had happened in the past year, and Dave felt himself constantly looking at his daughter as he wondered what would happen this time.

The past week had been busy. Dave went to Cincinnati to find a girl who had gone missing, and the entire time Rori stayed locked up in the house. She would text him in the morning, and call him at night. This was what she did every day he was away with home, so that wasn't what was unusual. As Rori talked, she didn't sound right. She was talking to him, but her answers weren't as detailed and she didn't sound excited about her day.

Garcia noticed it too. She demanded that Dave do something. When he came back from Ohio, he set up a plan for father/daughter bonding trip. Kyle was hanging out with his friends, and the twins were in New York with their parents.

He woke up Rori at four in the morning and told her to pack a bag for the weekend. They would be returning Monday morning. Dave packed up the dog and helped his sleep-deprived daughter get into the car. Before driving off, he made sure Rori was wrapped comfortably in her favorite blanket

Dave liked his cabin for many reasons. It was his. It was secluded, which meant it was extremely quiet. Concrete skyscrapers were replaced by a more natural kind; the kind with bark and leaves. His cabin was reserved for his family. He didn't bring friends or invite co-workers. The cabin had become a place for Rori and Dave to bond. Since spring, they had been to the cabin three times, and it had recently been vacated by his sister and her family. Dave thought about joining them, but again he had to rush off to stop a criminal. He regretted not sending Rori to meet them. It would have gotten her out of the house.

He was determined to find out what was bothering his daughter. Then he would help her with it. That was something dads did. He needed to help her if something was wrong.

Dave pulled to a stop in front of his cabin and let out a content sigh. As he turned off the car, he looked at Rori. He reached over and gently shook her shoulder. "Rori, we're here," he said quietly.

Rori shifted and covered her face with her blanket. "Where are we?" she mumbled.

"We're at the cabin," Dave smiled.

Rori pushed her blanket down and blinked. "You shuffled me out of the house at four in the morning so that we can go to the cabin for a couple of days?" she grumbled.

Dave looked at Rori as he reached for the door. "You want to tell me why you're acting like this?" he asked.

Rori opened her door and slid of her sear. "I don't want to talk about it," she said. "I want to go back to sleep."

"Rori," Dave sighed. He slid out of the car and walked to the back. He let the dogs out of the trunk and headed to the door.

"Dad," Rori shouted. "Come on!"

Dave walked up the steps. He would have to put the SUV in the garage later. "I'll be waking you up again if you aren't up by ten," he said. "We are going to talk. Everyone can see that you aren't acting like yourself."

Rori grumbled as he father pushed the door open. She quickly jogged in and up the flight of stairs. Dave looked up at the ceiling and waited for the unmistakable sound of a door slamming. He sighed and left the house to get the car unloaded. He looked at the two fishing poles he had packed. He was going to teach Rori to fish, and it would give him the perfect opportunity to talk with her. He only hoped she would talk to him.

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Rori followed her father as the two of them made their way to the lake. She looked at the two fishing poles and mentally groaned. She lifted up the tackle box she held in her hand and her lip curled back in distaste. The last thing she wanted to do was spend an afternoon drowning worms and reeling in fish.

"When fishing, won't the hook get caught on the rocks?" Rori asked. She'd seen a movie or two with a few fishing scenes, but they were comedies.

"I drove the boat over this morning," Dave said. By 'drove' he meant that he hooked a trailer that held the boat. There was a small road access to the lake, so Dave was able to get a boat to the water easily. Getting it in was the problem, but he had been doing it for years.

"How dig is this boat?" Rori asked curiously. She looked down at the tackle box again.

Dave shrugged. "It can fit the two of us," he said. "Just don't rock the boat."

Rori squinted her eyes as she was hit by a beam of hot light from the sun. She looked at the lake and searched for a boat. She spotted a small dock and saw a trailer with a boat. "I'm sure the dogs could fit too," she said with a nod. It was a pretty good sized boat.

"Mudgie will try to eat anything we catch," Rossi said. He was speaking from experience. He could only trust the dog when hunting. Fishing was another matter. "It's best if they stay in the cabin where it's air conditioned. They don't need to be constantly running around in this humidity."

"And we should be?" Rori asked.

Dave rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Have you ever been in a boat?"

Rori nodded. "Not for a long time though," she answered. "I think I was ten. I was in a summer camp while mom was helping on some case involving NCIS."

Dave wanted to ask about the case, but Rori didn't seem interested in talking about it. He looked over his shoulder and watched Rori as she dug the toe of her shoe into a small bed of pebbles. "Come on, let's get in the boat."

It wasn't long before Dave was maneuvering the boat to find the perfect fishing spot. Over the loud sound of the motor, Dave explained some fishing basics. "You can fish with bait or a lure. Using a lure involves you reeling in and recasting," Dave yelled.

Rori looked over the edge of the boat at the dark murky water. "We're supposed to catch fish in here?" she asked.

Dave nodded. "There have always been fish here. They swim in from the river and stay for food. They don't seem to leave the lake all too often."

Rori raised an eyebrow skeptically. She shook her head and pulled out her phone and plugged in a set of headphones.

"Put them away," Dave said darkly.

Rori grumbled, but slipped her phone back into her pocket. "Do I have to kill worms?" she asked. She actually didn't want to touch them, their slimy bodies creeped her out.

"No, I have some flavored marshmallow bait that you can use. I got it just in case you didn't want to use live bait," he said as he cut the motor. He knew she wouldn't want to touch worms or minnows. Manmade bait was the way to go.

"Marshmallow?" Rori asked curiously.

"Unless you want your stomach pumped, don't even think about eating it," Dave grunted. "Besides it doesn't smell appetizing. Fish love it though."

Rori's shoulders slumped and she rested her chin in the palm of her hand. There were several ways this day could go. They could catch some fish and discuss the sport. They could sit in silence and enjoy the companionship. Her dad could ask some questions that she didn't want to answer. All possibilities came with one conclusion: an awkward father/daughter activity.

Dave set up Rori's fishing pole. "Do you want to tell me why you've suddenly become a quiet, closed-off teenager?" he asked as he handed Rori a small plastic canister of manmade bait. He looked up at her as he started working on her fishing line. Rori held the bait in her hands and studied it carefully.

"I'm just having an off month. I'm not doing any voice acting right now," she said. "Boredom creates depression.

"Are you depressed?" Dave asked carefully.

"No," Rori shook her head. "That's the wrong word. I hate it when I can't find the right word. I just don't like being super bored. July is not the time to have nothing to do."

Dave nodded. "You're still writing for the paper. That takes some time."

"I don't like that the paper isn't going out weekly," Rori said. "I'm only able to publish one of several articles."

Dave shifted in his seat. Rori wrote articles based on their BAU's cases. She got permission from families to mention the victims. Dave enjoyed reading her pieces because the focus was never on the UnSub. She wrote about eh victims and the investigation.

"How are things with you and Kenta?" he asked changing the subject.

"All right," Rori answered. "His dad has him working at his security company on programming. He's not available during the week. He took me to Harry Potter seven, so that was nice." She shrugged as she unscrewed the canister. She looked at the neon pink, stinky, marshmallow like substance.

"Why don't you try and do something with Alice and Kaoru?" Dave suggested.

Rori snorted. "Oh yes, how I love to be a third wheel."

Dave looked at his daughter sternly. The teen kept her eyes on the bait in her hands. "There's something else bothering you."

Rori dug her pinky into the pink fluff and pulled a small bit out. "Eleven days," she said sadly. She set the canister down on the bottom of the boat and started to roll the bait into a small ball.

"What?" Dave asked.

"Eleven days until the twenty-eighth," Rori explained. "That would mean three years have passed since mom died."

Dave stopped working on getting the poles set up and let out another sigh. How had he not seen this? "Rori-"

"Don't worry about it," Rori cut him off. She smiled weakly. "It just doesn't feel like it's been that long. I still think about her all the time."

Dave rubbed his hands on his pants and looked at her. "I'm sorry," Dave told her. "I wish that she could be here."

Rori nodded. "Me too," she said. "She held up the centimeter long pink ball. With a quick smile, she laughed. "So are we going to do this fishing thing or what?"

Dave smiled and picked up a pole and handed it to her. "Don't hesitate to talk to me, Rori. I can't help if I don't know what's going on."

Dave started to explain casting and what she should do is her bobber went below the water. He smiled when Rori started to get excited. She lost the first fish that snagged her line and had to start over. The two of them spent a couple of hours on the water just making a memory. He wanted Rori to remember days like this, not the day her mom died, or the day that she woke up in a hospital alone. He preferred to remember the good days at his work. The days they found the children, the days he stopped a killer from snuffing out one more light in the world. Those were the days that he remembered.

While the anniversary of her mother's death was coming up, and it did have her down, Rori's internalized conflict was not about her mom. She had to make a decision and she only hoped it was the right one. Another thing she had to ask herself was: should she get her dad involved, or leave him in the dark. Either way, Rori needed to come up with an answer quickly. She was running out of time.

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Author's Note: This wasn't fluff like I normally write. I'm bringing the plotline in earlier because of the timing of everything. The song that inspired the piece was actually 'Just Fishin' by Trace Atkins, but you wouldn't know it if you heard the song. It's very fluffy. While I would prefer that no one noticed Rori's odd behavior, we're dealing with a team of profilers, so nothing gets by them.

I hope you'll stay tuned for more of this story, and I'll see about getting something more bright out for you soon. Leave a review because you know I love to hear from you guys.

Shane