Disclaimer: I own nothing; everything belongs to their rightful owners.

AN: Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read and/or review my stories, that really means the world to me! And a special thank you goes to my beta reader, the wonderful greeneyedconstellations!


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Where The Darkness Meets The Day

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-"You take it from me, my boy: there is no room in this business for love." - Terrence, Legends

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PART 4

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III

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"I'm sorry I couldn't be there sooner."

When Emily turns her head, she finds Clyde leaning against the open doors of the ambulance, watching her carefully.

She says nothing. Her head hurts and her eyes burn and there's still blood all over her clothes. She wonders where that paramedic went.

"I'm on my way back to London," Clyde tells her and climbs in next to her. "I called Loic. The CIA will take over from here."

"Is he here?"

Clyde shakes his head. "Not yet, but you know him. He'll never miss a chance to fuck with the FBI."

She almost laughs.

"Aaron won't like that," she murmurs instead.

"You can say that again," Clyde chuckles. "I'll make sure he rides with you to the hospital. It's better the two of them never cross paths."

Emily nods, her eyes still fixed on her blood stained hands. The blood is not hers.

"Tell me I had no choice," she half orders, half begs. Her voice quivering dangerously. "Tell me I had to do it."

She hears him draw a breath.

"You had no choice," he tells her after a brief pause. "You did what you had to do." He steps forward, reaching for her hand despite the blood staining her pale skin.

"What if there was another way? What if-"

"There are no what if's, Emily. You did what you had to do and it's over."

"I had him, Clyde, as soon as I told him the truth about Declan, I had him. There was no need-"

"He would have hurt you again the second you'd said no."

"But I didn't," she whispers. "I didn't say no."

He's quiet, but only for a moment before he cups her face between his hands to make her look at him.

"He's dead, Emily. Whatever happened tonight doesn't matter anymore."

She doesn't stop him when his fingers unclasp the gold necklace, and she watches silently as he slips it into the breast pocket of his leather jacket.

"It's time to let Lauren go."

The dizziness comes on unexpectedly and if Clyde hadn't been right in front of her she would have fallen. He catches her easily, her hands holding on to his jacket, leaving streaks of crimson.

"The adrenaline is wearing off," Clyde murmurs as if that explains everything. Maybe it does, but her head hurts too much to think. "You need to lay down."

She doesn't fight him when he pushes her back on the stretcher, gentle but firm, his lips on her forehead when he tells her goodbye.

"Take care, darling," he whispers quietly, and then he's out of her line of vision and Emily allows her eyes to flutter shut.

There's a voice she can't place and another she knows well. There's also a sharp pain in her arm and then she feels like she's floating. The ambulance starts to move, the siren comes to life and Emily winces at the piercing sound.

Someone's talking about a concussion, a ruptured eardrum and shock, and it takes Emily a long time to understand that this someone is talking about her. Someone else is whispering her name, too intimate, too familiar. And yet the only voice she desperately needs to hear.

It seems to take forever to open her eyes, but when she does she finds Aaron to her right, his eyes filled with concern and dread and love. Her palm in his, their fingers tangled.

"I love you," he whispers. "I love you."

If Emily hadn't been so tired, she would have told him not to.

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II

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He knows something is wrong the moment he looks up from his desk and finds her standing in the doorframe of his office.

"I lied," Emily starts before he even has time to ask what's going on. "I just didn't want you to worry. My car didn't break down," she continues, leaving the door open as she steps closer. "I'm not feeling well, maybe it's the flu or something. I think it might be better if I go home."

Aaron's taken aback for more than one reason.

He has no doubt that she lied to him earlier, but he also has no doubt that she's lying to him now. She does look paler than usual, and somehow nervous, but not sick.

"Do you need me to drive you?" he asks, unsure of how to handle this and slightly alarmed by how easily he can tell that she's lying.

She shakes her head, and even from behind his desk he can see her whole body tense.

"No, I'll grab a cab. I'll be fine, Hotch. And besides, you should be on your way to Louisiana already."

"I'm sure the team can manage one case without me," he answers, and ignores the fact that she just called him Hotch even though they're alone.

An almost panicked look crosses her features. "There's no need for that," she tries to convince him. "Really."

"At least stay at my apartment then," Aaron suggests, deciding that now isn't the right time to discuss whatever's going on. "It's closer than yours," he elaborates. "Also Jack won't be home until Friday night, and when I come back from Louisiana I can even make you some soup."

It sounds ridiculous even to him, but that's not what seems to trouble her.

"Jack's not at home?"

"No, he's spending a few days out of town with Haley's parents."

"Did you tell me that?"

Aaron frowns. "No, it was a last-minute decision."

The utter relief washing over her face makes no sense. "Emily what-"

"I love you."

There's no saying for sure who's more surprised, him or her. She bites her lip as if to keep herself from saying anything else, and then before he has the time to react she's already fleeing his office.

"Emily, wait!" he calls after her, but by the time he's reached the door she's nowhere to be seen. The hallway in front of his office empty, except for Dave who's watching him from his own office with an expression that makes clear he heard every single word.

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I

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Emily Prentiss doesn't do commitment. She never has.

There are many reasons for that, reasons every therapist would love to discuss to the point of exhaustion. But Emily Prentiss has never seen a therapist to discuss her inability to have a relationship and she doesn't plan on it either.

She's too independent to get attached, too confident of herself to get fooled by sweet nothings and too smart to fall in love in the first place. Her flaws are her own, and she keeps them hidden behind a picture-perfect look and self-assurance she's never actually possessed.

It's all lies, she whispers to herself every time she catches a glimpse in the mirror. Lies, no one tells as convincingly as Emily Prentiss, but lies nevertheless.

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As if things weren't horrible enough, Erin Strauss has to make it even worse.

Emily can see the anger boiling in his chest, the way he grabs the armrest just a little tighter on their way to New Mexico. But she knows he won't utter a word. He'll deal with it, somehow. Someday. Maybe.

She keeps sitting next to him in the dim light of his apartment, night after night, looking through file after file, trying to find something, anything.

The tension between them becomes thicker day-by-day, yet he's barely looking at her anymore. He's feeling guilty for everything and nothing and where a part of her understands, another doesn't.

The truth is she knows nothing. Not about love at least.

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"I encouraged him. I flirted with him. Made it personal," Emily murmurs, her eyes fixed on the floor before lifting her gaze to meet Aaron's. "Getting intimate with a killer is so different."

"It's what we do," he tells her. His voice almost too soft.

"Yeah, but there's no fixing how I feel right now, is there?"

It's the first time in weeks that he's looking at her, really looking at her, and for a moment, a brief moment, she considers telling him the truth. That's she never held a desk job in her life, that she's done worse things than flirt with a killer to get the job done. That almost everything he thinks he knows about her is a fucking lie.

But then she blinks and he does too.

"No," he answers quietly. "But it helped the case. And you did what you had to."

Everything goes straight to hell ten minutes later and she's glad she never told him the truth after all.

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Nothing could have prepared her for the darkness she finds in his eyes the second he opens the door. For a fleeting moment, all she wants to do is run and never come back.

"What do you want?" he slurs, and Emily watches as he staggers backwards. Proof that he's just as drunk as she expected him to be.

"You called me," she answers and pushes the door closed behind her. She's scanning the room quietly, the extreme neatness of his apartment almost terrifying. The only sign of his distress is an almost empty bottle of scotch on the living room table.

"I didn't ask you to come."

"No," she admits. "But I was worried."

Aaron scoffs, stumbling towards his couch and surprisingly making it. "Worried?" he echoes, reaching for the bottle on the table. "About what?"

Emily bites her tongue to keep herself from saying something she'll regret.

"Is Jack here," she asks him instead, slowly making her way towards him.

He laughs. It sounds cold and bitter and nothing like him. It frightens her to the core.

"No. Do you think I would be drinking with my son sleeping next door?"

The truth is she has no idea anymore. That's what grief does, Emily knows.

"I think it would be best if you weren't drinking at all," she tells him calmly, and reaches forward to take the bottle out of his hold in one quick move.

He's too drunk to stop her and he says nothing, only glares back at her when she settles down on the couch next to him. For a while they're both quiet, the only sound coming from the street downstairs through the open window.

"Jack needs you, Aaron."

He shakes his head. "He's fine with Jessica."

"But he needs his father."

"And who's fault is that," he whispers hoarsely, his voice laced with bitterness and regret.

"Aaron-"

He spins around so fast she can barely blink before his lips crash against hers. He grabs her roughly, his fingers digging into her skin until it hurts. The bottle slips through her hands and shatters on the floor.

His movements are unsteady and desperate, anger and guilt burning in his dark eyes when he pulls back to meet hers. "Please," he breathes against her lips. "Please, Emily, I need-"

She knows he's about to break, about to drown and there's just nothing she can say to help him. Someone else could, JJ maybe, but not her, not Emily. She has no consoling words, no empty promises, no sweet nothings to whisper in his ear. The truth is, it'll never stop hurting. He'll always wake up feeling guilty for the rest of his life.

"Emily," he begs. "Please, please just-"

Instead of an actual answer, she reaches between them to open his pants; it's all she has to offer, all she has to give. The only way Emily Prentiss knows how to deal with a darkness as dark as this. The only way she can think of to fix this. Even through she knows there is no fixing this.

He's broken beyond repair and so is she. She can't save him and he can't save her either. She should have known all along.

It's quick and rough and distant and Emily hates how dirty it makes her feel. His tears mingle with hers on her heated cheeks and she's just glad he's too drunk to notice.

He falls asleep on top of her almost as soon as it's over, and Emily wonders how long it's been since he last slept. For a while she keeps lying there, staring at the ceiling, trying to think of nothing at all.

She's counted to 1345 when she can't take it any longer. She slips out from under his body, adjusting her clothes halfheartedly, before covering Aaron's sleeping form with a blanket.

As quietly as possible, she picks up the glass from the floor, not even flinching when she cuts her skin. She mops up the floor with a towel from the kitchen and looks through all the cabinets to make sure there's not another bottle hidden somewhere. In the kitchen she grabs a glass, fills it with water and searches for the painkillers when her eyes catch sight of the drawing pinned carefully on the fridge. It's been there since Aaron moved in;she's seen it before and yet she's never really seen it.

It's the typical drawing of a four year old, and yet it's perfectly clear that the little figure in the middle is meant to be Jack, the one to his right Aaron and the one to his left Haley. All three of them have smiling faces, looking happy and carefree and like any family should look: alive.

It's that drawing that makes her come undone.

She makes it to the bathroom just in time. With her hands around the rim, she heaves until there's nothing left and then, for the first time since she was a child, Emily Prentiss shatters to pieces.

It's neither the time nor the place, and she barely manages to get the door shut before a sob racks her body. Followed by another and another. Tears start falling down her cheeks and there's just nothing she can do to stop. She's sobbing helplessly until she's gasping for air, but the tears keep coming and she's consumed by guilt and grief and all the things that could have been but never would.

There was no way to fix this.

They were nothing but a fucked up tragedy.

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Disclaimer: I own nothing; everything belongs to their rightful owners.