A/N: Hey guys. Penultimate chapter for y'all. I'll hopefully have a few more chapters of Falling Is Easy coming out soon, along with the next chapter of The Narrow Road, so watch for those.

Playlist for this chapter: "Broken Man" by Boys Like Girls, "Give Me a Sign" and "What Lies Beneath" by Breaking Benjamin, and "This Is Letting Go" by Rise Against.

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There was a mob in the hospital's waiting room. Luckily for the doctors and nurses on staff, this mob was of the worried sort rather than the more common angry variety.

They were a rather mismatched group, honestly. Seven of them were FBI agents (one of whom had just gotten stitched up himself), two were foreigners (not even from the same country!), five were teenagers (and even they were mismatched, an athlete, bookworm, tech geek, goth, and tomboy), and the last was a young woman whom was American but had lived in England for most of the last decade. All fifteen were waiting for news on two teen boys that had just been brought in.

The boys themselves were unusual. One was in for a GSW to the arm, but not much else was wrong with him besides a very mild concussion from getting knocked out. He'd already been moved into a room, head bandaged and arm sporting twelve new stitches.

It was the other boy that they were all waiting on. He'd come in with a plethora of ailments, from cuts and burns to one of the strangest cases of starvation the hospital staff had ever seen. From what they'd been told by the group waiting, the teen had gone missing less than a week ago, in perfect health, and now, after only five days without food, his body had begun to break down what little fat storage he had and had even started on muscle mass before they got him set up to an IV. Then, they were shocked when the IV bag was empty within an hour and had to be replaced every half hour for the next three hours.

Their other main concerns were his broken arm and the burnt cuts on his chest and back. They had to rebreak the bone in order to properly set his arm, and they couldn't even deaden the pain with medicine, since the teen refused to take any. He even tried to protest the IV until they assured him it was only saline. But, they put his arm in a cast and moved on to his torso. There wasn't much else they could do but wrap the wounds after washing off the dried blood. The burns prevented them from being able to stitch them up, but any salve they would have used could infect the cuts. So they coated the whole area with antibiotic and covered it. Then they moved him to stay in the other boy's room.

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"...You shouldn't've pushed me."

Danny's statement broke the almost ten-minute silence that had fallen since he'd been moved in.

Alex shrugged, wincing as the movement jostled his arm.

"You shouldn't have," Danny reiterated, forcing himself up on his good arm to better see Alex.

"But I did," Alex replied. "He would've killed you, Danny. And I promised Yassen I'd bring you back."

Danny flopped back down. "...Who's to say they want me back?"

Now, Alex pushed himself up. "What are you talking about? Of course they want you back!"

"They would…. If they were real…."

Alex's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

Danny locked eyes with the spy. "They're clones. All of them were replaced by clones."

Brown eyes went wide. "Y—You can't possibly think—!"

"Can't I?"

"Isn't there some way to test them, like you did to me and—?"

Danny shook his head. "He wasn't cloned from you. And I did test them."

"Did they fail?"

There was a long pause, then, "...No."

"Then they're real."

"No," Danny immediately denied, "it just means he gave the clones their memories."

There was another pause as Alex tried to find any trace of doubt in Danny's face. He found none. "...So find another way to prove it's them."

Wide, sad blue eyes glanced up at Alex. "But, how?"

Alex bit his lip, then slowly shook his head. "That's one you'll have to figure out on your own, mate."

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By the time the teens were settled in their room, visiting hours were over, and not even federal badges were convincing the nurses to look the other way. Instead, the worried-and-now-slightly-annoyed mob went back home, the FBI agents opening their homes to the rest. The group shared some take-out at one of Morgan's houses, then crashed.

Except for a few.

Danielle and Jazz couldn't sleep, Yassen had never kept normal hours, and Reid… well, Reid managed to get his hands on more coffee. But whatever the reason, the four found themselves sitting around the coffee table, staring blankly. They sat there for a long time, not moving, not speaking, just staring.

"...It's all gonna change, isn't it?" Danielle whispered almost an hour later. "Danny's gonna change."

Jazz put an arm around the younger girl, pulling her close in a side-hug. "Yeah," she murmured, "he'll change. But he'll still be Danny."

Reid nodded at that. "He'll just need all of us to help him through it."

Yassen looked around at the other three, then stood. "We should get to bed. Visiting hours begin at eight tomorrow." He left, silent and graceful as he snuck past the sleeping guests.

Jazz glanced over at Reid. "How was Danny dealing before all this?"

Reid sighed, knowing this had been coming. "He was getting better…."

"But?"

"But he'd begun to develop an aversion to touch. He explained it to me, quickly, just before he left. He said it wasn't as bad with us because all we'd done was help him, and he was still in shock around you all, but he was worried he… well, he wasn't sure if he'd be okay around Yassen, and that upset him."

Jazz nodded, staring off into space again. "And this probably just made it worse, didn't it?"

"Most likely. We also don't know what all was done to him, so…."

"We don't know how that will effect him."

The three lapsed into another long silence.

"So, what can we do?" Once again, it was Danielle who broke the silence.

Reid sighed heavily. "All we can do is wait."

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Neither Alex nor Danny could sleep much that night. Instead, they stayed up, swapping stories and complaining about previous hospital stays. Alex ended up winning that round of 'Which Was Worse?' with his experience after being shot.

"You seriously took on three terrorists with a hole in your shoulder?" Danny gasped, chuckling too hard to breathe properly.

"I didn't know they were terrorists at the time! ...I thought they were just kidnappers…."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Right, 'cause everyone chases down kidnappers when they see them…."

"Hey, would you have done any different?"

"...No…."

Alex crossed his arms, a smug grin on his face. "That's what I thought."

There was another drawn-out silence. Danny picked at his sheets, avoiding Alex's gaze. Then, "H—How do you do it?"

Alex's brow furrowed. "Do what?"

Blue eyes peeked through black bangs. Danny bit his lip, then spoke. "How—How do you keep going? A—After a case, I mean?"

Alex stared for a long moment, then nodded and rolled out of bed. He moved over towards Danny's bed, sitting down in the chair next to him. "I'm not gonna lie to you, Danny. It's going to be hard. But you… you just need to find someone you can talk to, someone you can trust."

Danny gave a sort of half-chuckle, a choked-off sound that nearly made Alex wince. The younger boy shook his head. "There's no one. None of them are real."

"Not even the BAU? Or your uncle?"

"I—I can't. I can't lay all this on them."

"Alright, so tell me."

Danny's eyes went wide. "W—What?"

"You can tell me. You've already found a way to prove I'm really me, and I can at least partially relate to what you're going through."

"But—you're going back to England soon."

Alex shrugged. "I've got a phone. You can call me."

There was another long moment of silence, then, "W—Who do you have, t—to talk to, I mean?"

The blond flashed a small smile. "I've got Jack. And my friend Sabina. She actually lives in San Francisco."

Danny nodded absently.

"And, now I'll have you, too."

The younger boy blinked once more at the blond, who smirked.

"Like I said, talk to someone you trust. And if you trust them, they should trust you, too, right?"

The two merely sat for several minutes, the pause for once comfortable.

"...Thanks, Alex."

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They were allowed visitors in the morning. The BAU came in first, quickly taking statements before they socialized. With their work out of the way, they quickly made sure the two were okay and comfortable. It took a bit more reassuring to convince Reid and Garcia than it did for the others, but the group eventually made their way out to allow the rest their time.

Ben, Jack, and Yassen were next, the first two checking over Alex while the latter merely nodded his thanks to the blond before sitting down by Danny and murmuring something in Russian. The two spoke quietly in the foreign tongue for the duration of their visit.

The doctor cleared Alex to leave with Ben and Jack, who were eager to head back to England as soon as possible. But as Alex stood to leave, he found himself conflicted, half wanting to get home and half wanting to stay behind and make sure Danny was okay. He glanced over at Danny, receiving a small smirk as the boy jerked his head towards the door. Alex got the message and headed out, giving Danny a smile of his own and tossing him a balled-up piece of paper.

Yassen smirked at Danny's shocked look as the door closed. "What's it say?" he asked.

Danny smoothed out the page, smiling as he read the message inside. "'If you want to talk, call me.' Then it gives a number."

"Will you be calling him?"

"I think I will…."

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Yassen was still in the room when the five Amity Parkers came in. Jazz gave her uncle a quick smile and hug before introducing the others.

There was a long moment where Danny was overcome by the scents and feel of his friends in a way he never had before. He'd gotten used to Alex's mixed scent of a soccer field and the leather of the balls used in said sport, along with the powerful, almost explosive feel surrounding the blond like an aura. He'd even grown accustomed to the smells of his uncle (gunpowder and metal and a faint coppery scent he knew to be blood) and found it amusing that he felt like a cat to him. Though, the latter made sense, given Yassen's tendency to stay calm and cool in all situations and move with the grace of a feline.

But it was still highly unusual to be sensing so much about his friends and sisters. After all, he knew about what each of them liked, but to actually smell and feel those things? For instance, Jazz smelled like paper and ink with the slightest hint of ectoplasm, no doubt due to the exposure to their parents' lab. Add that to the hushed feel around her, and she came across as a library to Danny.

The rest had their own specific smells and feels as well. Tucker smelled like ozone and metal, and he almost seemed to crackle in sync with the gadgets he carried. Valerie also smelled of metal, along with gunpowder and ectoplasm from ghost hunting. Her feel was more like a runner. She felt fast and strong, athletic, and constantly doing something. Danielle felt on the move, too, but more like a roamer or nomad than an athlete. She had the same ectoplasm as Val and Jazz but stronger due to it flowing through her body, as well as a shifting sort of smell that Danny decided must have come from her travels.

Finally, Sam. Sam was a breath of fresh air—literally. Danny immediately recognized her scent as that after-a-rainstorm fresh smell mixed with pollen, dirt, dew, and the flowers that she grew in her green house. Even as overwhelming as his senses were now getting, Danny knew Sam would, as always, be the exception. In fact, her scent alone simply strengthened his ghostly obsession with her. But then he felt her aura. She felt like freedom, like the wind in his hair when he flew. For all her pessimism and Gothic attitude and looks, she felt surprisingly bright and sunny. It was so… refreshing, just being around her, especially after everything that had happened with Scorpia and the Drakes.

Then he realized he'd completely zoned out while they'd been speaking to him.

"—you like Lancer does, but even Dash misses you," Danielle was saying. "I think they're really close to letting you back, maybe even in time for when school starts?"

"Mmm," Danny mumbled, not able to give a real response to that, mostly because he really didn't believe it at all.

But they were all smiling at him, waiting for the words to "sink in" and make him excited and anxious to return to the city that had turned on him. So he gave them a fake smile, hiding behind a grimace they attributed to physical pain rather than emotional. After all, they hadn't been there when the town found out about him. They didn't know.

Yassen saw straight through it, though. The man gave the teens one of his signature half-smiles, saying, "Daniil needs his rest. You all can come back tomorrow, if you'd like."

Jazz shook her head. "Mom ordered us on the next flight back." She gave her uncle a sheepish grin. "She wasn't too happy with us when she found out we flew out here without telling her."

Yassen's lips pursed and his eyes hardened slightly. "Nor was I."

Jazz blushed, glancing at her shifting feet like a child caught up after curfew. "Ya orgorchyenn, dyadya…."

Yassen gave her a small smile and a nod. "It's fine. I'm sure you have a flight to catch."

"Right," Jazz said, waving the others towards the door. "Let's get going." She glanced back at Danny and smiled. "Get better soon, little brother."

Danny returned her smile, and the others migrated out, calling out their own good-byes. With them gone, he looked back at Yassen. "When can I leave?"

"They want to keep you overnight for observation," he said succinctly. "You'll be released in the morning." He stood, knowing visiting hours were ending soon. "Get some rest. I'll pick you up in the morning."

"And I'll be staying with you?" Danny asked sleepily, fighting off a yawn.

Another half-smile was sent his way. "Da, Daniil, you'll be staying with me."

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Danny lugged another stack of boxes up to the door, knocking and waiting with Reid for Yassen to open the door. He glanced up at the genius. "You guys didn't have to help me move, y'know."

Reid just smiled back. "We know. But we wanted to." Then, he nodded across the parking lot at Morgan and Rossi, who were unloading a bed from the truck. "Besides, Morgan would never pass up an opportunity to show off in front of women."

And sure enough, all the female neighbors were out and watching the move-in process. Danny chuckled. "Yeah, he never needs an excuse to flirt, does he?"

Both were snickering by the time Yassen unlocked the door, holding it open so they could enter. All three made their way from the small hallway that was the entrance to the two-bedroom apartment Yassen had finally moved into.

The living room was directly across from the door, made up of a TV, couch, and table. A doorway to the left of the entrance marked the kitchen while the right held a bathroom. There was a long table, capable of seating eight, on the opposite side of the living room as the TV and couch. Branching out from the living room were two other hallways, one going north and the other south. Danny and Reid took the south hall towards Danny's room. Yassen's was down the other way, along with another bathroom. A door next to Danny's bedroom opened to a laundry room, complete with washer-dryer and fold-away ironing board.

Danny nudged his door open with a foot, glad he'd not shut it on his way out. Reid followed the teen into the dark-painted room, taking a moment once again to study the walls.

At first glance, it looked as though someone—a child, perhaps—had splattered white paint onto the dark navy of the walls, but if one took a moment to study the dots splashed atop the previous paint job, they would realize that it was actually done quite carefully to mimic the stars in the night sky. A thick, dark green carpet covered the floor, finishing off the outdoors-y theme of the room.

"Where do you want the boxes?" Reid asked, lifting said boxes a little higher.

"On the dresser." Danny nodded at the one piece of furniture already in place before setting his own box on the floor between the door and the side wall. "I'm pretty sure everything in those belong in or on the dresser, but I'll sort them later." He turned his box, checking the label and nodding again. "This will be the nightstand once it's put together."

One of Reid's eyebrows jumped towards his hairline. "You're going to build it?"

Danny blushed. "Believe it or not, I fixed a lot of my parents' inventions. Not counting the Portal."

Reid chuckled at that. "Wish you hadn't fixed hat one, huh?"

"You could say that."

There was a soft thud from the hallway before Morgan leaned into the room. "Where do you want the bed?"

"Ah, over against this wall." Danny thumbed over his shoulder at the wall behind him.

Morgan nodded, disappearing for a moment before coming back in with Rossi, bed held between them. As they eased it to the floor, Morgan asked, "So, where'd Yassen run off to?"

Danny shrugged. "Don't know. He opened the door for us, though, so he has to be around somewhere."

"Does he disappear like this a lot?" Rossi asked, still a bit suspicious of the ex-assassin.

Danny shot him an almost-glare. "He comes and goes. Why?"

Rossi's hands flew up, palms forward, in a placating gesture. "Just asking.

Any response Danny would have made was cut off by the doorbell. The teen blinked. "Who—?"

The bell rang again.

Morgan smirked. "Sounds like you should go get that."

"R—Right." Danny stood back up, heading into the hall and angling for the door. He vaguely heard Reid ask something about warning someone but dismissed it as he reached the entrance to the apartment. "Who is it?" he called through the door.

"Hotch. I came to help with the moving."

Danny glanced behind him, seeing no other boxes that needed to be moved or emptied and thinking back to the truck outside, which had also been emptied. Still, he opened the door, knowing Hotch wasn't a threat to him or Yassen. "We've pretty much finished with the move-in—GAH!" he cried as a blonde, brightly-dressed blur lunged at him. He was thrown off-balance by the attack/hug and landed with a crash.

"Danny!" the blur—Garcia—exclaimed.

A few chuckles sounded above him, proving that Hotch and Garcia weren't the only two who had come. "Garcia, you do realize he needs to breathe, right?" JJ giggled.

"Oh!" Garcia gasped, eyes wide as she leapt back to her feet. Once she was standing, she offered a hand up to Danny, who took it, gulping in as much air as he could. Garcia hugged him again, considerably less tight, and said, "I missed you!"

Prentiss laughed. "You saw him yesterday!"

"And it feels like forever!" Garcia declared. "Which is why I'm throwing him a house-warming party!"

"Wha?" Danny gaped, still trying to catch his breath.

The group of four came in then, and Danny noticed that each was carrying a bag or two.

"What're… those?" he asked.

JJ lifted one of her bags. "Decorations—"

"Streamers—" Prentiss added, lifting a bag of her own.

"Snacks—" Hotch chipped in, nodding at one of the bags he carried.

"Drinks—"

"Cake—"

"And party hats!" Garcia finished, grabbing a bag she'd left outside. Several helium-filled balloons were tied to the handles.

Danny chuckled at them, but lead them to the living room just the same. Morgan, Reid, and Rossi were already waiting, grinning at all the supplies Garcia had brought.

"Geez, Baby Girl, didja bring enough?" Morgan asked, laughing at Garcia's indignant look.

"Oh, hush!" she huffed in response, swatting at him. Then she turned to Danny. "Now, c'mon, hun, get your uncle out here!"

Danny nodded, accepting his task, and went down the far hallway to Yassen's room. He gave a soft knock on the door, waiting for a reply. The teen's eyes slipped shut, still exhausted from his stay with the Drakes, but he shook himself awake.

"Still tired, then?"

"GAH!" Danny yelped, jumping at the unexpected voice as his uncle, once again, snuck up on him. It annoyed Danny to no end that, even with his hyper-acute senses, his uncle could still sneak past him. "Don't do that, dyadya!"

Yassen chuckled. "Ya orgorchyenn, plyemyannik." He briefly studied his nephew before speaking again. "You haven't been sleeping, have you?"

Danny shrugged. "I've been a little busy."

The ex-assassin frowned. He opened his mouth to respond when Garcia called out from the living room, asking what was taking them so long. Yassen glanced at Danny, saying only, "We'll discuss this later." Then, he led the way out into the living room.

Danny paused on his way, his eyes closing and letting his senses flood him with information. His uncle was slinking over by Reid, who smelled (and felt) like well-read books. Hotch, stiff as ever, was speaking with Italian-cooking Rossi and cologne-and-dog Morgan. The teen had to chuckle at that realization. Of course Derek the Ladies' Man Morgan would smell like a dog. Though that was probably more due to Clooney than Morgan's usual one-date/night-only stance on relationships. The girls buzzed nearby, most of said buzzing due to the ever-enthusiastic Garcia, since Prentiss and JJ never really got that ecstatic over something so trivial. In fact, the latter two seemed happier just sipping on their drinks and watching their friends, which made sense, as JJ was probably eager to head back home to her son and Prentiss would love to get something new to tease Morgan about.

The half-ghost's eyes shot open. There was no way he could have known all that just from his senses. And yet… he just knew he was right. Just like he knew Sam to be his obsession, there was something instinctual about the things he uncovered with his acute senses.

He shook his head and finally made his way to the living room. He could worry about his increased perceptiveness later. Right now, he had a party to get to.

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A/N: Once again posting after midnight. Sigh. And here I thought I'd actually manage a post around 9…. Oh, well. Read and review, please! And if you have any suggestions as to how characters should smell/feel to Danny, please send them along!