A/N: This will be the last chapter. I know I promised a few more, but this one naturally came to a nice end, and I didn't feel the need to keep it going. Sometimes less is more. Thank you to everyone else who has taken the time to read and review, or just favorite, alert, etc. Special thanks go out to: Aradatm, BrandSpankingNew, crazyobsession101, jenny crum, KazyCMfan, kdzl, scadki, Tara621, twilightfan888 and whimsical-one-ga for your reviews. Finally, I'd like to say Merry Christmas to my sister, Tara621, who requested this story as her Christmas gift. So sorry it's taken so long, but I hope it was worth it! Thank you for the inspiration for this story and your constant encouragement to finish it.

After I sing, somehow, I feel a little better.

Now that Emily is sitting on her ass and not occupying the space beneath the mistletoe, I pull Garcia gently to her feet and lead her to the kitchen to stand beneath it. I stare into her eyes and ignore the hoots and hollers around us. JJ, Emily and Rossi are having a field day with this. I kiss her gently on the cheek and then wrap my arms around her. She says she might need me, and I'm sure she needs me now. Because I need her. We stand there for a long moment, swaying to Bing Crosby in the background.

The next thing I know, she is leading me. We go to the next room, where no one is sitting and sit close together on the giant leather sofa.

"No matter what is going on between us," I tell her deliberately, "even if you're pissed at me or I'm bein' an ass, know that you can always count on me. You can always come to me if you need me. I'll always be here for you."

She swallows, and her eyes are a little misty. "Thanks," she says. "Same here."

"So," I say, waiting. "What do you need?"

"Oh, wow. Okay. Um… Right now, I need to know how you are," she says, turning the tables on me so quick I'm unsure how to react.

She waits.

"I…don't know how to do this," I admit. "I don't know how to go back to bein' the man I was before this happened. But I don't know how to be anybody else." I shrug. I'm not overly emotional, just telling her how it is. She asked, after all.

"Can I tell you something?" she asks.

"Of course."

"You might not like it."

"Go."

"I don't think we can go back to the people we were. I think who we are is constantly evolving and everything we go through changes us. It takes time to learn to live with that." She pauses, thinking. "It's easy for me to accept that you've changed, but it's hard to accept the same change in myself. I want to be the same person I was just like you do. I don't want to have days where I can't get out of bed, or where I want to pull away from everybody and everything. Or be the kind of crazy person who never wants to take another vacation because of what we've been through. But I have to integrate those pieces of myself somehow. It's a process and it sucks. It might take years. But I think we'll get there."

I sit quietly and listen. I wonder how she got so wise about all of this. I nod at her to keep going but she shakes her head.

"No, come on. What else?" I prompt.

"Nothing. That's it."

"Seriously?" I ask.

"Isn't it enough to know that things will get better someday?" she asks, swatting me with a pillow.

The laugh feels out of place, but it comes, just the same. I glance out the window and see the wind whipping about. The green grass. Proof that it's summer and that our Christmas celebration is out of place. But then I look again at my girl and her reindeer headband. Is it out of place if we want to feel it? If we want to embrace the feeling of closeness that exists in the winter months? Slowly, everyone else has filtered in to sit with us.

I put my arm around Garcia and she leans into me. "Sometimes I think about that first night…" I muse aloud. "I remember us trying to take them down. When JJ took the attention off me," I say, looking her in the eye. She looks at me, fearlessly, unashamed.

"I'd do it again," she says tipping her chin at me the way I do when I don't want someone's pity. There is a fire in her eyes that lets me know she is serious. That this isn't just a platitude she is speaking to make me feel better.

We sit together, not speaking, when the sky outside opens up. The rain comes down in sheets and I hold Garcia a little closer. I remember the storms we weathered in the Seychelles. Lightening flashes and thunder booms. She shivers a little. It takes me a second to realize what Garcia said was true. We're all feeling this. We're all changed by it. Even looking around the room, I can see it. Because six months ago, we'd all be sitting on our own little islands, talking about shit that didn't really matter. But now, we're all connected.

I'm holding onto Garcia and Emily's leaning against her leg. JJ's beside Emily, holding her hand. On JJ's other side is Hotch - his hand resting on her shoulder. Rossi's foot is nudged awkwardly next to Hotch and Reid is whispering to Rossi, his long-ass hair brushing Rossi's shoulder.

Gifts are forgotten and there's a mess in the kitchen. But Rossi leaves it be. Instead, we sit and talk. We instinctively ignore our phones and any other technology. JJ shares about her interview, about how difficult it is to readjust to life now. How much more difficult it is to be a parent to Henry when he as had two months of uninterrupted raising by Will. Hotch agrees. He doesn't say much, but he nods. In a silence, Rossi offers an apology that we quickly make him take back.

"This is totally not your fault," Emily drawls. They were assholes. They took us hostage, Rossi."

"See? I told you," Reid says, a little smug and a little triumphant. "No one is blaming you except you."

"No blaming yourself, Rossi. It's Christmas Eve," Garcia says, and I love her for it. "And if it helps. I'm instituting that it's Christmas every day, so you can live each day free of guilt."

He offers her a smile. It's weak, but it's there.

I look around at all of us, and it's clear we have a long way to go. None of us is fixed yet, but like Garcia said, it's okay. It's not really Christmas Eve, but that's not really what's important. What is important is that we've got each other's backs in the days to come. That no matter what, even when all hope seems lost, we never lose it completely.

Because if this has taught me anything, it's that nothing is as impossible as it seems. It's that, in this day and age, miracles can still happen. And that sometimes, that miracle is as simple as seven people sitting in a darkened living room together, finding the courage to take that next step.

It's us believing, in spite of everything, that light is just around the corner.