Silent like the Night.

Silently, like thoughts that come and go, the snowflakes fall, each one a gem.

William Hamilton Gibson

Claudia Hawkner was definitely, completely and without regard to her psychological state – having a mental breakdown! The darkness had descended, filling the blinding sky with night. Just as bad. Black or white it didn't matter, too much of either color was dangerous for a monochrome. Her stupid eyes didn't have the ability to distinguish much in complete black and white. She relied on the differentiations in the greyscale to determine where she was, how high an object was, whether the ground was flat or bumpy, if she was walking up a hill or down it. Her mother used to make her walk around for ages with her eyes closed so that she could use her other senses to compensate for her type of legal 'blindness'. Usually, in winter, she used her sense of temperature to calculate how high the snow was in the dark, or if the sky had been painted white by the clouds. But it wasn't working today; her hands, her face, her feet, her legs, her eyebrows, her hair, everything and anything related to her and her body were frozen. She could vaguely make out her limbs moving so she knew she wasn't dead yet. But she couldn't feel anything, and that was more scary to her than the ability to see or not. Even a truly blind person could survive in the wilderness, not well, but still…survive. Something moved in the darkness, a white blurry spot. It was flashing a little, were there trees nearby? The crunching of the snow changed in tone, it wasn't so thick anymore. It was gravellier. She bent down quickly, her hand stretched out before her, hitting the ground hard.

Claudia simply could not feel anything, had she been able to see in color it would have been apparent that her hands, feet and lips were turning blue.

She bent closer to the ground, trying to figure out in the darkness why the snow had sounded different. She clutched at a handful of the ground; she pulled away frozen mud, small stones and scraped her knuckles against asphalt.

I'm on a road. I found a road!

She almost cried, just as she began to stagger to her feet a small dark Mini Cooper turned a bend and came directly at her. Its lights flashing in the night. The driver of the Mini was suitably shocked, turned the wheel wildly and braked immediately. Claudia was frozen in shock, her last thought something along the lines of I escape a madman only to die by car?

UNSUBCRIMINALMINDS

Garcia glanced around her office, surveying the massive computer system she had created slowing down its processing, the pitchy whirr gradually tapering off. She never actually turned the computer off; she merely put it to sleep so that the other projects she worked on could keep running their programming. Since Reid had been kidnapped by Henkel all those many months ago, she, like the other members of the BAU's number one team, kept a ready-bag at the office. She had been surprised when Hotch had rung demanding that she come to the maniac's house to dismantle and understand Henkel's system. The team hadn't said she should go up to Alleghany County; in fact, Hotch seemed to vaguely suggest she shouldn't. But Penelope Garcia had never been one to follow vague suggestions, and it was always better she had learned, to apologise than to ask permission. She lugged her portable suitcase, which substituted as her ready-bag, out of its hidey-hole and dragged it up the corridors of Quantico. She programmed her MP3 player to play through her car's radio and started the drive-out to help her team get Emily back.

The team knowing that any work concerning Emily's abduction couldn't be started until the next morning had retired to their rooms for the night. None of them slept. If they did, it wasn't well or for long.

Reid's mind worked over-time, pouring through every memory of the case, collating and organizing the pages of his eidetic memory for similarities, differences, coincidences, anything that could be helpful, hopeful or handy. It was three in the morning when he gave up, at least when he consciously gave up, his subconscious was not going to let this one go for as long as Emily was away. Perhaps even after she came back his brain would be struggling with this incident, for a very long time to come…if she came back.

Morgan didn't sleep either. He was angry with himself. Everyone had just assumed that the UnSub had taken a fancy to blonde haired, blue-eyed women for a reason, they hadn't given any thought to what that reason might be, just that it was. He cursed the way that once there was an established typology, all other thought of reasons for it went out the window. He knew if they ever figured out this UnSub's reasons for changing typology, it was going to be very enlightening for future profiles. Every Behavioral Analyst would be very careful when coming up with victimology from now on. He reminded himself that the type of victim is only a precursor to understanding the UnSub's mindset; it is not a definitive statement.

Rossi did sleep. He also dreamed. Violent bloody nightmares where the UnSub brutally tortured and violated Emily as punishment for being a brunette. In his nightmare, the UnSub had come for JJ but upon realising she was pregnant had gone into a violent rage; Emily had come out of the bathroom and confronted him. He had threatened JJ's safety, so Emily had done her all to protect her fellow team member. He had taken Emily instead, as a payment for JJ's deception. At some point Rossi had realised he was dreaming, but he couldn't stop the nightmare from continuing. He was a bystander in his own dream, he couldn't affect anything, he couldn't stop anything and even when the UnSub had had a psychotic break and killed Emily viciously the nightmare continued. He had to watch as his subconscious played out his deepest fears; the team finally arriving at the scene to save Emily, only to see her mutilated body spread out for their viewing. Rossi desperately wanted to wake up, he screamed in his nightmare, he cursed and railed against the suffocating terror. But he didn't wake up.

Hope you all enjoyed (?) this installment.

Arc