We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

--Blaise Pascal

Her original plan, after she collected herself, was to lie in wait in the hallway and ambush him when he came out. However, when he didn't appear for nearly an hour, most of her anger had already dissolved into a sort of resigned unhappiness that she couldn't do a damn thing right with him. Melancholy settled over her like a rain cloud, and then the guilt wormed its familiar way into her stomach. If only she hadn't pushed him or been so insistent at breakfast. Living with him and his personality wouldn't be easy in the best of circumstances, but now that he was shutting himself off totally from her, it made things ever more difficult and heartbreaking. She wanted to be with him romantically, yes, but she also wanted to see him be happy, and that took priority over any other of her desires. And happy was not part of the Aaron Hotchner vernacular at the moment.

Solid advice was what she needed, and not from JJ or Garcia. They loved and respected Hotch and would be sympathetic towards her plight, but she didn't feel comfortable talking about him in a romantic sense with them: He was their boss, after all, not their romantic interest. Ditto for Morgan (Hotch was definitely not his romantic interest, and she'd be flogged for even suggesting it). Reid…well, she wasn't sure if he even had a love life, and any advice from him was best taken with a grain of salt. He'd probably toss off some statistic about PTSD and relationships. While Rossi was not exactly the poster child for happiness, much less healthy relationships, he knew Hotch better than almost anyone. So she went downstairs and punched Dave's number into her phone. He answered on the first ring – the bastard had probably been waiting for her to call.

"Rossi."

"It's Prentiss."

"Dumping him already? Well, you've come to the pro."

"Ha ha. Dave, be serious. He's a mess right now. Won't even talk to me. I don't know what to do. He already overexerted himself, big surprise, and when I tried to help him, he told me to, quote, get the fuck away."

"Ouch."

"It's awful. I've never seen him like this. I –" Her voice caught, and she covered the unintentional display of emotion by coughing.

Of course, he didn't buy it for a second. "I'm calling big-time bullshit on this one, Prentiss. You want to talk about being a mess? Take a look in the mirror. You're worried that he's going to revert back to the hardass, stone-cold Hotch. Go tell him you're not going to take his crap anymore. Be an adult, be a goddamn FBI agent. Don't get me to do it for you."

"He listens to you, though."

"Sure, but I'm not the one he's in love with. Emily, this case has been chewing him up from the beginning. He was a wreck in Boston. It's not you. You didn't see him after that call from Foyet and what happened on that bus….I had to calm him down enough just to function, much less compartmentalize and work the case. This has nothing to do with your actions. He's fucked up inside, and you are the last person he wants to see him like that. He doesn't do that to his loved ones if he can help it. It's in his nature to blame himself for what happened, and he doesn't want to soil what he views as your undamaged mind with that guilt."

"But I'm not undamaged!" she protested. "None of us are. How could we be?"

"That's the other thing. He's somehow warped it in his mind that he's putting us all through this. Destroying our minds."

"No!" she cried, too loudly. "God, tell me that's not true."

How could he think that? The job was far from easy, but she wouldn't choose to do anything else. They went out every day knowing that this could be the one that would break them, that they could take a bullet or a knife on this one and be dead within minutes. And they chose to go. He didn't push them out the door, forcing them to face their deaths. They went because it was what they did and who they were, and for all of them, those two things were bonds tighter than blood. This team lived for what they did, him more than any of them. He embodied this job. He was this job. They went so that the others, Jack and Henry and all the kids they came across, wouldn't have to ever know what they knew. They went not for fame or glamour or glory or good bar stories or to prove themselves, but for the one less family that would grieve. The one girl who would walk down the aisle with her father on her wedding day, instead of lying in a crude, hastily-dug grave in a forest. The one prostitute who wouldn't be found in an alley the next morning, raped, mutilated, blood congealing like frozen red tears from her wounds. The one child who could play safely in his front yard.

For Kelly. For Jane. For Rebecca. For Sarah. For Gideon. For Elle. For themselves. For all the victims and all the survivors and all the families. For the nameless ones, the Jane and John Does, the ones whose eyes appeared in her dreams night after night, staring unseeingly into the very depths of her soul. For the ones who suffered quietly – the abused child, the grown man who witnessed his mother's murder and relived it every night, the girl who never told about her rapist. They went, and they paid the debt for it, but the debt was worth it. They atoned for the sins of others. And they would never be able to spill enough of their own blood, emotionally, to atone for all the literal blood the unsubs spilled.

But they went anyway. Not because Hotch needed them to, but because they needed to in order to live with themselves at the end of the day. He knew that.

Didn't he?

She hung up after exchanging brief goodbyes with Rossi, disturbed by the dark turn the conversation had taken. Was that why Hotch refused to let her help him? He believed she was untouched by the job, and he didn't want to ruin that? Well, if that was the case, he was sorely mistaken.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, startling her. He didn't look at her as he entered the kitchen and went straight to the sink, pouring himself a glass of water one-handed. Somehow he had managed to pull on a shirt. Her anger had returned after her talk with Rossi, and it bubbled just under her skin, threatening to boil over. She kept her tongue in check, though, not wanting to antagonize him further. I should apologize.

"I'm sorry, Hotch. I shouldn't have been so forward. I didn't mean to push you like that." His lip twitched ever so slightly, but she caught it, thanks to her profiling skills. So she was forgiven, at least somewhat, judging by his expression and movements.

"Prentiss. It's my fault. I don't cope well with pain, apparently."

She pursed her lips. Or your emotions. "Did you take a pill?"

"No." Of course. "I took two yesterday. I'll be fine."

No, you're not fucking fine. You're messed up, and you won't let anyone help you. You don't listen to me, you don't listen to Rossi, you don't listen to anyone, not even your subconscious. You're screaming out for help and you don't even know it. You miss your son and you don't know what to do with me and you're sad, scared, confused, furious, all at once. It hurts inside and out, but there's no pill you can take for your emotions, is there? You have to face them. But you're unwilling to do that. You blame yourself for the Foyet fuckup and for how many ways this team is hurting. Each of us differently, but the pain is the one common thread. We don't know what to say or do around you, and I think you feel the same way around us. I've cried my fair share of tears over this team and this case and over you, especially over you. And you haven't shed any. Where's the justice in that, Aaron? I love you. I want to help you. You're bleeding, and I want to stitch you up.

"Sounds good," she said.

She would confront him soon. And he would not be able to hide this time.

A/N: Two updates in one day! My muse must love you guys a lot. This chapter was kind of Emily's rationalization for why she feels what she feels about her job and about Hotch. And I think, despite what she feels, she understands Hotch very well. Moreover, she understands why he's breaking down. That is really the building block of the quasi-relationship they have going. I promise that things will begin to heat up between them soon, romantically speaking. Review!