Essential listening: Da Vinci, by Weezer

0o0

Grace took her time getting to work that morning.

She set off early, so that it didn't make her late (and she had been largely unable to sleep, in any case), and got off the AMTRACK two stations early just to walk the rest of the way. It was a pleasant day, and the four mile trek up to Quantico was more or less flat. She didn't walk it fast, settling herself in instead with a long gait so she didn't work up too much of a sweat.

It wouldn't do to arrive looking out of sorts. Not today.

She had made a quiet exit from the hospital the night before, and her head still felt a little loud. Henry Lamontagne-Jareau had been tiny and perfect, and as happy she was for Will and JJ, it had battered her heart somewhat.

Still, it wasn't as if she didn't have experience at keeping things to herself, or weathering the looks co-workers gave you when they suspected you were a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

That was part of the reason she had wanted to get in early.

Even after her walk, she was only the second person in, and the bullpen was dark and quiet. There was a light on in Hotch's office, and she paused at the door of the large room for a moment, taking it in, trying to memorise it in case this was the last time she saw it.

It had begun to feel a lot like home over the past couple of years.

Hotch looked up as she opened the glass door, even though it hadn't made a noise. He had obviously been waiting for her. Grace met his gaze and walked slowly through the desks towards his office, feeling as if she were climbing her own scaffold. The sensation was disturbingly familiar.

The ache she'd built up on her walk helped to ground her, so she didn't even bother dropping her bag at her desk. She wasn't even totally sure it still was hers.

"Sit down," said Hotch, by way of greeting.

Grace did what she was told, reflexively maintaining a professionally blank expression. Hotch's didn't give much away either, though something about the tone of his voice expressed disappointment.

With deliberate care, he put his pen down and subjected her to one of his patented hard stares.

"You've served in a position where you had responsibility for others, yes?"

Surprised, Grace nodded.

"What would you do if a subordinate had sucker punched a colleague?"

Grace took a breath. "I would give them a month's suspension, pending investigation, and probably throw them off the team. They would have betrayed my trust – and that of their colleagues." She swallowed. "And they should be ashamed."

There was a moment of tense silence. Grace stared at the picture of Jack above Hotch's right shoulder, trying to stay calm and steady.

"Would it be a different manner if they were provoked?" Hotch asked.

Grace allowed herself to look at him, a little confused. Why was he being so circumspect?

"I – I suppose it would depend on the provocation," she said, warily. "But I would also say that that is no excuse for hurting someone."

Hotch gazed at her for a full, unnerving minute and then sighed. "I don't think, given what may have been said to that subordinate, that suspension would be entirely fair, in this… hypothetical instance."

Grace stared at him, feeling that her boss might well have gone crazy. He couldn't ignore an assault on one of his team, surely?

"I have always given this team a certain amount of latitude," he said carefully, "and I have only seldom been made to regret it."

Grace narrowed her eyes at that, wondering what other indiscretions he had kept to himself over the years. She thought about the mysterious Elle, and the sad way Garcia spoke about her when her guard was down. She was the only one who did, these days.

"I'm one agent short at the moment, though Agent Todd seems to be a reasonable fit until JJ goes back. We have cases coming in all the time – I can't afford to have anyone out just now," he said, picking his words with care. "I won't formally reprimand you for what happened in Las Vegas as long as it doesn't happen ever again. It does, and you're out of here for good."

Swallowing hard, Grace nodded.

Hotch nodded too, and picked up a file. Grace took this as her cue to leave. She was almost at the door when he spoke again, looking down at the open paperwork.

"You told me once that I could trust you," he said, and looked up. "Don't make me regret it."

She nodded again, not trusting herself to speak, and walked quickly down the steps, feeling oddly dizzy.

0o0

"Yeah, but you gotta admit, American football is more excitin' than rugby," Morgan argued, pulling a face.

Grace snorted derisively.

What had started out as a harmless discussion of the differences in British and American school system had somehow devolved into an intense argument over the merits of various sports. It felt good to bicker about something inconsequential. In the couple of weeks since JJ had given birth, Grace had felt utterly disconnected, running through old casework instead of sleeping and avoiding social situations.

She was withdrawing from them, and she knew it. It was a survival mechanism. Her discussion with Hotch should have given her some comfort, but it had felt to Grace a lot more like a stay of execution, and she preferred to insulate herself from the pain of eventually leaving.

Besides, violence was the worst possible response she could have made, and she hated herself for it.

Given their line of work, this emotional turmoil had not gone unnoticed amongst her co-workers, and almost every one of them had taken it upon themselves to force her to engage. Prentiss and Garcia had taken her out for cocktails, Rossi had invited her out for dinner, Hotch had asked her to watch Jack while he put together some new furniture for his room in the house they only shared every other weekend and Morgan had simply shown up the night before with a bag full of snacks and a pizza and insisted that they watch the Chicago Bears play the Minnesota Vikings.

The only people who hadn't engaged in this not-so-subtle manipulation were Jordan Todd (who didn't know her yet), JJ (who was pretty busy with her infant son) and… Reid.

That part of her that wasn't still furious with him hoped they were doing the same for him.

"In what universe?" she scoffed. "American football is obviously a highly skilled sport, but really, what possessed you people to think that stopping the match every five minutes to swap players and have a chat constituted 'excitement'?"

"Nah, it's an integral part of the game." Morgan shook his head, managing to express his astonishment at her preference and his affection for her weirdness all at once. "Side changes make it clear who's in play – you know, attack and defence?"

"Why do you need only one in play?" Grace asked. "Most team sports have both happening at once. I don't get why you need a whole other team for that."

"It's to keep them fresher."

"It's a sport! They're athletes! They ought to be able to keep going for the whole match without a rest every few minutes."

That made Morgan laugh, at least. "It's a whole different set of muscles."

"Rugby players manage it."

It was Morgan's turn to scoff. "You and your rugby. I don't get it," he complained. "What's the point of forming a scrum when the ball is underneath them all?"

"Getting the ball to go where you want it mid-scrum is a fine skill," Grace protested.

"Yeah well, at least in American football you have an idea of where the ball is moving to because you can see the thing."

"You can see the ball in rugby, too," Grace pointed out, as they got into the lift. "It's not invisible – and they're pretty much the same size and colour, give or take."

"Okay, smartass, what about the difference between a quarterback and a line-backer? The physicality's totally different."

"You get a range in rugby, too," she told him. "It's just everyone has thighs like tree trunks and shoulders like battering rams. And don't even get me started on all that ridiculous padding."

Morgan snorted again, and both of them smiled, happy in the knowledge that neither of them was really serious about the argument, and that it didn't really matter.

They stepped out of the lift and nearly ran into Agent Anderson, who was – as usual – prowling the corridors on mysterious errands of his own.

"Oh, hey Anderson. What do you think? American football or rugby?" Morgan asked.

Anderson stared at him for a moment, nonplussed. "Uh… I've never watched rugby."

Morgan turned to Grace with a grin. "Told you."

"Uh, Pearce, have you read the Franklin report?" Anderson asked.

"This morning," Grace replied, shaking her head at Morgan. "Just because someone hasn't seen something doesn't mean it's automatically not as good."

"You keep telling yourself that," said Morgan.

"There's a couple of things I need to go over with you," said Anderson. "You got a minute?"

"Sure."

Out of her eye, she watched Morgan sidle over to JJ's office, currently occupied by Jordan Todd and – from the sound of it – a very unhappy detective from out of state.

Anderson's eyes had wandered in that direction, too, and he smirked at her. Todd was very beautiful, and it was no secret that Derek Morgan had the hots for her. It looked like he'd have the opportunity to help her out – though this being Morgan he would have done it for anyone in the building, regardless of whether or not he fancied them.

Even from across the hall, Todd looked particularly harassed. There were stacks of files a foot deep on every surface in the office. It looked a little like she'd tried to build a wall out of them in front of her. Opposite her sat a desperate and frustrated detective. From the looks of things, their meeting had already got out of hand.

Grace turned her attention to Anderson's queries, eavesdropping as she did so.

"I'm gonna present this to the team, and if they're interested, I'll call you," said Todd, and both Grace and Anderson (who was also listening in) winced.

"If the team is 'interested'?" the Detective repeated.

"It's not a matter of interest," Todd said hurriedly, but the damage had already been done.

The detective got to his feet. "You just said 'interested'," he said, snatching back the file he had brought with him.

"Detective – that's not quite what I meant –" Todd stuttered.

"Is it that there's only one victim and not enough bodies for you?" he asked, no longer prepared to listen.

"Not at all!"

"My victim's not covered in peanut butter and decapitated?"

"They only need to be certain that they can help," Todd told him, sounding desperate.

"They sure as hell couldn't hurt!" he snapped, getting in her face.

"That's actually not true, sir," said Morgan smoothly, walking in. It shut the detective down straight away, mostly out of confusion. "To take focus away from your investigation to build a profile could be a waste of your time and resources if you're already on the right track."

"A girl's been dead three months –"

"And you feel like if you don't do somethin' to help her, no one will," Morgan guessed.

The detective shifted from foot to foot, obviously frustrated. Someone was speaking his language now, however. "Her mom calls me three times a day."

"I've been there," Morgan told him. "Chicago P.D. trust me, I get it. If there is something we can do to help you, we will."

The detective sighed, still frustrated, but mollified at least. "My cell number's on the report," he said, reluctantly handing Morgan the file.

"I'm Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan," he said, as the detective turns to leave, still in high dudgeon. "I'll call you personally."

He offered his hand to shake, but the other didn't take it. "We'll see."

The detective stalked out, past Anderson and Grace, and went to glare at the lift. Over Anderson's shoulder Grace could see him repeatedly punching the button. The two agents had given up all pretence of conversation now; the Franklin file could wait. This was far more interesting – sometimes the sanity of the BAU depended entirely on distracting themselves with office gossip.

The whole situation could have been avoided if Todd hadn't used the wrong word, Grace reflected. It was so hard teaching your brain not to say slightly the wrong thing, though. People were so apt to misinterpret everything, and in Counter Terrorism it was rare for things to be so personal. Maybe it was time for some friendly advice – this job was hard enough without a bit of support now and then.

Obviously, Morgan had had the same idea. "You really have to be careful how you phrase things," he began, but she interrupted, angrily.

"What was that?"

What was what? Grace thought. He was just helping you out.

Morgan stared at her, taken aback. "Excuse me?"

"'I'll call you personally?'" Todd retorted. "I'm the liaison!"

Grace and Anderson shared a surprised, mildly appalled look. Anderson gave a low whistle and she nodded. This was not the way to make new friends.

Not that I'm doing so well in that department, lately, she reminded herself.

Morgan stared at her, clearly unprepared for this level of venom. "You can call him yourse-"

"And you didn't have to come in here and take over my consultation like that!" she snapped, practically ripping the file out of Morgan's hands.

"It was your first solo, I was simply tryin' to help," Morgan said, affronted.

"Well, from now on, Supervisory Special Agent Morgan, if I need your help, I'll ask," Todd informed him, rather acidly.

"You're welcome," Morgan said. "Agent Todd."

He made his way back over to Grace, and Anderson immediately gave a masterful performance of someone who had just finished a frank discussion of the Franklin case, and departed with his dignity intact.

It didn't fool Morgan for a moment. "What the hell was that about?" he asked.

There was no use pretending she hadn't heard. Anyone in the corridor would've.

"I was only tryin' to help…"

Grace shrugged. "She's new and she feels like you trod on her feet in there. She wants to handle it by herself, and it probably seemed like you didn't think she could cope," Grace explained. "She's frustrated. This is a lot different to her old unit – and JJ barely had time to begin her training before Henry decided to put in an appearance."

"But I –"

"I know, you were only trying to help," said Grace, briskly. "Come on, we've got two cases to review by lunch."

0o0

Spencer followed Rossi out of the lecture theatre and shook hands with a few students who had wanted to question them more carefully or thank them for the talk.

He hated recruitment talks. He was patently bad at them, and he always managed to make a fool out of himself somehow. It was the same with any presentation, really. His genius didn't stretch to public speaking and it seemed like the rest of the world had a significantly different sense of humour to him.

Still, it was good to be back in a university again – especially without a stack of bodies somewhere nearby. Academic settings were always a source of comfort, as long as no one asked him to speak.

Today's talk could have gone better, he decided, but at least Rossi was there to iron out the wrinkles.

Waiting for the senior agent to wrap up a conversation with a student not much younger than himself, he rubbed his chin. There was still the faint outline of a bruise there, and it ached a little when he talked.

You could say what you liked about Grace bloody Pearce (and he had, at length, when he and Prentiss had gone out for lunch the other day) she had a mean uppercut. It had felt, briefly, like he'd been punched by a bear.

They set off along the corridor.

"You do know we want them to actually join the Bureau?" Rossi asked, and Spencer glanced at him, not sure whether he was being teased or not.

He grimaced; it was probably a reference to the joke he'd told. Even he had felt that one die a death. "What?" he asked. "Yeah."

Rossi shook his head. "We need them to think it's a cool place to work."

"No, I understand that," Spencer responded.

Rossi, walking backwards now, was obviously quite exasperated. "Existentialism?"

"Existentialism – uh…"

Spencer turned, distracted, to nod politely at a young female college student who seemed bent on telling him how good a seminar it was.

Perhaps she had attended a different one.

"Uh – hi – hi…" he stammered, then looked back at Rossi, nonplussed. "That was a funny joke, "What do you mean?"

"Yeah, to Sigmund Freud," Rossi scoffed.

"I tell them they shouldn't send me on these things and they keep sending me," he declared, frustrated. He just wasn't good at presenting a 'cool' outlook to people. "I don't know why."

They paused at the top of the stairs.

"Because you're young," Rossi told him.

"Young or Jung?" Spencer quipped, and his friend rolled his eyes.

"Dr Reid."

They both turned to find a middle-aged man with long, white hair and a perfectly trimmed moustache following them. He was wearing a suit and delicate little gold-rimmed glasses (octagonal, Spencer noted), and he looked like he might be a lecturer.

"Wouldn't they sit in the dark and hope that the bulb decided to light again?" he said.

He spoke softly, like someone who worked in a library.

"Excuse me?" Spencer asked, puzzled.

"An existentialist," said the man, tapping his goatee with one finger, "would never change the bulb. He would simply allow the darkness to exist."

Cottoning on, Spencer nodded, impressed. "Yeah, that's pretty good," he said, amused.

They set off again, and this time the guy came with, like he was insinuating himself into their group. "I'm Professor Rothchild," he said, in that same, quiet tone. "It was a brilliant presentation – brilliant. You're a remarkably effective recruitment tool. The FBI is very lucky to have you."

"Um thank – thank you for saying that," said Spencer, flattered.

Rossi checked his watch rather pointedly; they had cases to assess back at Quantico.

"May I show you something?" Professor Rothchild enquired.

"Uh –" He hesitated, glancing at Rossi because he recognised the impatient body language. "Of course."

He didn't want to be rude.

The Professor handed him a black, cloth covered folder – almost a portfolio. "It's all right here."

Somewhere at the back of his mind – and for no reason he could pinpoint – the hair on the back of Spencer's neck began to stand up. There was just something about this guy that was a little off.

Careful not to drop it, Spencer took out some high quality A4 pictures. They had been printed on good paper and the inks used were top notch, but that wasn't what caught his attention. No. The subject was a woman in abject distress, throwing her hand up at the camera. Spencer frowned. In the next image she was screaming into the camera, and the next…

"I don't understand," he said, flicking through increasingly horrifying images. They were all indistinct, hard to make out. "What are – what are these?"

His mind switched gear – suddenly that little prickle in the back of his neck made more sense. He ran his eyes over the Professor, taking in more about the neat little guy, in case this was a confession.

"Seven homicide victims," said Rothchild, in a quiet, clipped voice. Everything about him was clipped, somehow. Tidy. Even the way he held himself.

"Homicide?" Rossi asked, no longer impatient. He, too, was paying a great deal of attention to the Professor.

"Seven women," said Rothchild. "Their bodies have never been found. Not a fingernail, not a hair fibre. Acid is a very tidy way of disposing of something," he continued, taking the photos back.

Rossi exchanged a look with Spencer. "Acid?"

Maybe this was a confession.

Spencer looked hard at him. "Are you saying that you killed these women?"

The man didn't look up. Instead, he approached the bannister of the stairs. "There is still time to save the others, though."

Spencer met Rossi's eyes, concerned. "Others?" Rossi asked.

"Five more," Professor Rothchild told them.

"What do you mean?" Spencer prompted.

They might be able to get more out of him, if they could keep him talking.

Rothchild checked his watch, obviously enjoying the pantomime. "In a bit less than nine hours, five other people are going to be dead – unless you can find a way to save them."

To underline his words, he threw all the photos down the stairs, in a very camp sort of way. They watched them cascade through the air for a moment before Rossi put a hand on the Professor's shoulder. He's not making any kind of move to get away, but you could never be too careful.

Anyone crazy enough to kill multiple women and then hand themselves in to the FBI for fun was capable of almost anything.

Spencer looked at him again; everything about him was smug. He already believed he had won.

0o0

"Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other. It will unriddle many riddles."

Mark Twain

0o0

Aaron was working steadily through the stack of files on his desk, finishing up admin, making sure cases were strong and resources were being deployed properly.

By BAU standards, it had been relatively quiet for the last few days, and the team had been able to use their time to catch up with the thousands of case reviews that came through their office every year. Several of them had managed to conduct or attend various seminars, including the one Rossi and Reid had been sent to that morning. It was a pleasant change of pace, despite the subject matter, and it had allowed all of them to relax a little, particularly given how weird it was without JJ around.

And they needed it. Some days it seemed like his entire team was one bad day away from being kicked out of the Bureau. They had largely been behaving themselves, though it was still a bit of a trial to be in the same room as Reid and Pearce. They currently had a bit of a problem with professionalism in the face of some very bruised feelings, and Aaron had taken to separating them as often as he could, for the sake of everyone's sanity. Not that he wanted to treat them any differently – but he worried about them.

Spencer Reid had had it tough, and the way Pearce had lost her father had evidently taken its toll. In lieu of the mutual support they'd given each other since her arrival in the US, they both seemed a little lost.

But with Reid at the recruitment seminar and Pearce working through case reviews with Morgan, the morning had been relatively stress-free.

So he was wholly unprepared when Jordan Todd stormed through his open door, practically spitting fire.

"You're my boss, correct?" she demanded, without so much as a hello.

Aaron stared at her for a moment, nonplussed. "Excuse me?"

"I report to you?" she clarified, angrily.

"That's right," he confirmed. He tilted his head, looking at his new, temporary agent somewhat askance. It didn't take a profiler to see that she was fuming – the question was why.

"Has my job performance been to your satisfaction, sir?" Todd demanded.

"It seems fine," he said, wincing slightly.

It had seemed fine, but now he was a little less certain of that. Who ran into their boss's office and basically yelled questions at them? Something had obviously got her rattled.

"And if it weren't to your satisfaction, you'd tell me?"

"I can promise you that," Aaron said, with some concern.

"Because, I can do this job!"

"I'm sorry," said Aaron, feeling he was missing an essential part of this conversation. "Has someone suggested that you can't?"

"Have they?" Todd asked, her body language screaming that this was a challenge and he'd better damn well tell her.

"Not to me," he said, thoughtfully.

"Thank you sir." She turned and hurried off, nearly knocking Prentiss down on her way out.

"Hey –" Prentiss stared after her.

Aaron shook his head. The BAU did things to people – especially when they were new.

"What's wrong with Agent Todd?" he asked, hoping Prentiss could shed some light on the matter.

Sadly, she could not. "I haven't really spent a lot of time with her," she said, looking troubled.

"Well, something's bothering her."

"I'll keep an eye on her," said Prentiss. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes – uh – the Houston case," Aaron said, reaching for the file as he remembered why he'd asked her in in the first place. "I'm missing the coroner's supplemental for victim three," he said, indicating the post it note he'd stuck to the outside of the case file.

"That's supposed to come in this afternoon…" she trailed off, narrowing her eyes. "I just turned that in last night," she remarked. "When do you sleep?"

"Get me the supplemental so I can close the case," he instructed, ignoring the question because the answer was, basically, 'on the jet, two days ago'.

"Yes sir," she said, heading for the door.

"Thank you."

No sooner had she left the room, his telephone rang. Sighing, he answered it; clearing it was a day of interruptions. "Hey Dave."

Rossi starting talking without even saying hello, which was always a bad sign. "Reid and I were just approached by some guy here, with photos of what he claims are seven women he killed," he said, and Aaron put down his pen, listening intently. "His pictures have all been manipulated in some way so that you can't really see what they are."

"But he said he killed them?" Aaron asked.

"Seven women," Rossi agreed. "So far."

"So far?"

Aaron's heart began to beat faster; instinct told him that this one was going to be far from straightforward.

"There are five more live victims somewhere that we can save in nine hours," Rossi explained tersely.

"Is this guy for real, Dave? Is he a confessor, a wannabe?"

"I don't think so Hotch, I get a hit off of him. Somethin' hinky. I'm bringin' him in."