Chapter Ten: Rossi – The man comes around

Thanks to my fantastically patient beta, Greeneyedconstellations!

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David Rossi has been called many things in his life, but very rarely a coward.

He feels like a coward now. A very, very cold coward.

A very, very cold coward with a goddamn stick up his arse.

To amuse himself, he resorts to alternating between singing, airing all his complaints into the resolutely silent radio, and occasionally chatting to the milling wolves below.

"You," he announces, shifting on the slick branch and peering down at the closest wolf wandering around the base of the tree. "Look ridiculous. Look at you. You've got the most ridiculous coat of fur I've ever seen on a wolf. If wolves had daytime TV, you'd star as the teenage heartthrob who plays guitar and looks brooding all the time. You'd get broken up with, constantly. You'd drive one of those little hatchback cars and drink shite coffee."

The wolf itches at his ear and wanders off, ignoring Rossi's rambling.

He shifts again on the branch. His ass is cold. His hands are beyond frozen. He tries to move them along the branch he's clinging to, but they ignore him and stay solidly attached. He's probably going to get frostbite.

The temperature drops while he's thinking about it and he groans and smacks his head against the branch, feeling frost fall from his face to his lap. Yep. Definitely frostbite. He coughs. The sound hurts. His bones ache, his legs are lumps of useless meat, his face is frozen.

All jokes aside, he's going to die in this tree just as surely as if he climbs down to play tag with the doggies on the ground.

He looks down again. There's a trio of wolves watching him, the one constant of the impossible hours that have passed since tumbling down that hill and taking to this fucking tree to get away from the animals that chased him. As the dawn had come, so had the wolves. These three seemed pretty set on hanging around.

The scrawny one wanders off again, disinterested in the other two, and as he watches, the creamy coated wolf patiently pads after it, herding it back to the hulking shape of the brown wolf watching. The small one growls, the thin noise floating up to Rossi, snapping at the white one. It follows anyway.

"I know how you feel, friend," Rossi says glumly. Something wet trickles down the back of his neck, sneaking into the layers of coats that are all that's keeping him alive. "I've been married before. They're all the same."

The creamy wolf looks up at that, and he fancies its face is almost disapproving. He pokes his tongue out at it.

Hey, he's probably going to be dead soon. A glance up confirms that the weak morning light is hidden by the flurries of snow that are beginning to fall.

Might as well be childish while he can be.

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The creamy wolf is patiently kind.

The dark one looms protectively.

The shaggy tawny one is… twitchy. Snappy. Distracted.

Rossi can't put his finger on why, but this combination of personalities terrifies him on a deep level, and he could probably work it out but he really doesn't want to.

Instead he focuses on the radio. Snow builds on the branch around him. His fingers slip on the buttons, he almost drops it twice. He stops joking around.

"This is SSA David Rossi, please, please, if anyone is listening. I'm alone, my team is alone. Please…" He trails off. Underneath him, there's a new wolf. The skinny one walks by its side. His two friends keep right back, both bristling. "We're gonna die up here," he whispers, letting go of the button and closing his eyes. He's tired, achingly tired, and colder than he thought it was possible to be.

The tree shudders slightly. The new wolf bares its fangs at him. He bets they could climb up here if they wanted to. He saw them turn from human to wolf. They're just torturing him now.

"Just wanna see an old man cry, do you?" he shouts down, his voice a harsh croak. He coughs again. "Fuck you. Mutts."

The radio hums. He almost drops it again in his shock. The voice is distant, broken, but so familiar Rossi almost does cry.

"Dave? Da… are you? Ar-kay?"

"Aaron! Aaron, Christ, are you alright?" Rossi gasps, almost pressing the radio to his mouth in his desperation to speak to his friend. The voice that returns is impossible to discern. "Hang on, Hotch. Just hang on. Give me a sec."

This is going to hurt.

He straightens, every part of his body screaming as he tucks the radio in the front of his coat and inches up the tree, using his hands to drag himself up, his bad leg hanging uselessly. Inch by inch. Slowly, painfully slowly, and if he doesn't hurry up he's going to lose Hotch, but he simply can't make his body respond faster.

There's an echo-y bark under him, almost worried, but when he looks down his foot slips and he slams into the branch on his stomach with all of his weight. Wheezing, gasping, coughing, breath gone and lungs screaming.

He keeps going. His eyes are watering, the tears freezing as soon as they slip onto his cheek and leaving frozen trails of pain.

He can't.

He has to stop.

His fingers fumble the button. It takes him five goes to press it down. Another five to form words. "Fucking freezing."

"Christ, Dave. I thought… I thought the worst." Hotch sounds wrecked. He sounds cold. He sounds clear. Rossi could sing, if he had the air to. "Are you okay?"

Rossi almost laughs. "Oh, you know. Bit chilly. Bit battered. Think I might have broken my leg, actually, but the cold's kinda working for me there. Can't feel a damn thing."

A sharp hiss that sets the radio to humming. "Can you run?"

"Fuck no. I barely managed to get myself up this tree. By the way, I'm up a tree. Lovely view. Company is questionable, though."

"Dave." He guesses it was a bit much to expect a laugh from his friend. "They're werewolves."

And there it is. He's too damn old for this crap. "Yeah. I know. I lost JJ, Hotch. She was behind me and there… I lost her."

"I know. She's with them. So… so is Reid." Hotch's voice cracks and it's not the radio. "Prentiss is with me."

"She okay?"

Hotch doesn't answer, not right away. "Are any of us?" he says eventually, bitterly. Rossi takes the chance to look down and examine the wolves under him. Really examine them. The creamy one is almost invisible against the snow.

The dark one watches him sadly.

"I think," Rossi says finally. "I know where JJ is."

Silence. One of the wolves below him howls. "We're coming to you, Dave," Hotch says, and his voice is intent. "We're coming to you, right now. Stay where you are."

Sleep beckons. The dark and the cold beckon. If he sleeps up here, he'll never wake up.

"Sorry, Aaron," he says quietly, and the tears aren't really just because of the wind anymore. "It's go down there and get chewed on, or stay up here and become the worst kind of popsicle."

The radio crackles. "Don't go down there. Don't go to her. You don't know what they do, it's sex, they use-"

"They're gonna turn me into one of them, right? A—this is still ridiculous by the way—werewolf? That's okay. It's fine. Look, the doc down in the town, he's a wolf. So's his son. And they weren't crazy or brainwashed or whatever the fuck is going on with our team right now. Which means this can be fixed."

"We don't know that. I don't know that."

"Well you better work it out then, yeah? You know I don't like being rescued much, Aaron, but I'm fucking relying on you to help me this time. Okay?" He's pleading. He's pleading like his life depends on it, and maybe it does.

Silence. Then.

"Okay."

Rossi's not one for goodbyes. He takes his finger off the button and hits the off switch. Hotch doesn't need to know what happens next.

He climbs down.

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It takes him longer than he'll ever admit to get to the bottom of the tree.

He sits on a branch low enough that he won't break his neck if he falls, but high enough that the wolves will have to work to drag him out of it if they feel inclined. Though he doesn't think they will.

There's only his three down there. Two of them watch him. The third paces, teeth bared, a hungry gleam in its familiar eyes.

Not it. His. His familiar eyes. Rossi chokes back something that's almost a gasp but not quite a sob. Sorry kid. Should have done better by you.

The cream one whines.

"Alright, lobos. This is going to suck for all of us, right?" The wolves stare at him. The tan one paces. "You know," Rossi says quietly, knowing all three can hear him, his eyes locked on the tan animal. There's something in his eyes, something empty, and it makes Rossi want to hit something, to shout, to rage. Bitch. "I'd prefer… I'd prefer if the kid could look me in the fucking eye tomorrow when this is all over. Because he's gonna kill himself with guilt over this when Hotch comes to get us." He pauses. The white one narrows her eyes. Blue eyes.

Damn.

"Please, JJ?" he says. She looks at him. She nods. And she steps forward.

Sorry, Will, Rossi thinks glumly, and he drops out of the tree.