A/N:

Hello everybody.

First of all I need to apologize for the long delay. I actually wanted to have an update titled with the words "Happy New Year" but I guess I'm a little late for that. I was absolutely stuck and had not a single idea what to write. Or actually - I knew what I wanted to write but whenever I tried to all I got was a massive amount of crap and I'm still not absolutely sure about this chapter...

Thanks a lot to mcleagan, sarahb2007, Riza Prentiss and Jen for your revies to the last chapter, though!

I hope you'll like that one, too... and that anyone still ready this since I neglected this story for almost three months. I promise to get the next update to you sooner! I'm kinda sorta almost in my whole graduation thing but writing has become somewhat easier durin the last week. Increase of inspiration, decrease of failure... so if anyone could give me a second (or for I haven't been that quick a write ever a 28th chance) I'd be very, very glad!

Before ending my author's note I have to say that I think it's really sad to see Paget brewster leaving again, even though it's quiete understandable if one looks at how CBS has treated her. I hope she'll be replaced by some awesome character (such as Seaver - even though I seem to be one of the, at best, handful of people liking her, like: a lot) and that Paget Brewster will be in some awesome show I can start to love and become a fanatic fan of. :D

Please, please, please leave a review!

Hope you'll like it,

~ AJ


In the moment of our birth, is the moment of our death already set?

Do we have a destiny or an actual choice?

Will the boy that peacefully plays with his box of new matchbox cars and takes a nap in the arms of his grandmother inevitably become the broken tramp who sleeps underneath a bridge, the lone child that is beaten within an inch of his life by his own father or the tormented body who did not survive the moments of torture that stipulated the end of his life and whos murderer was over the hills and far away by the time his body was found; gotten off scot-free?

Her father had died years ago and his funeral had turned out to be one of the worst she had ever attended. This, seeming naturally to most, might not even have been an unusual thing for it was her own father, a person in flesh and blood as close to her as only one other person, which she had brought to his grave but in hindsight it were the guests that had filled this day with the depression and sadness that she couldn't abandon from her memory. Her mother had been pleased to get to meet a big cheese from TV and a couple of Senators which she hadn't had contact to in a while and the funeral banquet had allowed her to renew most of her connections and to overtake some of her deceased husband's as well.

Emily had been too young to be interested in anything like politics but old enough to be disgusted by it. Not having had her father around much had meant that her life could go on pretty much the way it did before and from the secret tears she had seen her mother cry the night before she could tell that the loss hadn't left the ambassador unaffected, but what she had done that day... it just hadn't seemed right.

How many would show up at her funeral? The thought that she should have thought of this earlier crossed her mind. Thinking about it now, Emily really didn't want many people to be there but some would probably not show up only weeks after attending her first funeral anyways. What would they be told? The whole, brutal truth or some heroic tale that held least of the facts? How many would feel defrauded, how many hurt; who would be proud, touched, at odds with oneself or just... sad?

She shivered, wondering where all the cold came from. Alcohol, she knew, caused people to easily become hypothermic because it widened the blood vessels. And wasn't Dilaudid supposed to make her sleep or leastways numb? Her very first cat had been put to sleep due to the unjustifiable pain that continuing to live with a brain tumor would have meant. The already gaunt animal had looked calm, peaceful, maybe even freed.

Looking at it now, Emily was both in pain and a witness to the quickening retreat of her mental presence. What she did not feel was the relief or the calm but growing tempestuousness. A narrow line of coldness on her cheek indicated that she was losing control and crying at least a couple of tears.

It was cold and dark; again.

She couldn't let go but couldn't go anywhere else, was stuck with no way out; again.

A thud sound next to her indicated that something had fallen onto the ground and, just for a moment, Emily seriously considered to not care at all, to not try to open her eyes but let go of the world just as planned. As she heared the first panted gasp these intentions were, naturally, tossed overboard within seconds. The cold surrounding air touched her open eyes with comforting gentleness and stopped the tears.

Ian Doyle was lying next to her, white foam at his mouth, staring at her with glassy eyes. She took a deep breath and gathered her strength to give the dying man a very last, sneering grin. "Pathetic."


Someone could have given him a hard kick in the guts or just a plain nutshot, it would have been a more gentle experience than looking at the woman in front of them. Hotch had pulled out his Blackberry, using the faint screenlight to take a closer look on the dead body, he refused to think or say Prentiss to, in front of him. The piercing smell of urine was in the air and deeply intruding his lungs. The death he stared at held Hotch's gaze without mercy.

The parts of her face that weren't covered with caked blood and vomit were badly bruised and hardly recognizable. Thick strands of long, black hair fell around her face or were sticking to it as they had become one with the engrossing mixture of bodily fluids. If her clothes hadn't been ripped open he hadn't even been able to doubtlessly assign her a gender.

"She's so cold", Reid whispered, "so cold..."

Then finally his mind began to resume work. "She's cold", he repeated and even though he knew that Doyle had tortured the dead woman in front of them to death he couldn't supress to feel relieved, even smile a little. "A body's decrease in temperature is proportional to the difference of temperature and ambient temperature and proportional to the time!"

"Meaning... what?", Ashley asked cautiously, being careful to raise hope before truly understanding what he was telling her, "is it possible that isn't Emily?"

"There is no logical way that this is her", Reid straightened out, "even if... even if Doyle had killed her right away she wasn't gone long enough to be that cold and look at the amount of injuries - this woman has been held and tortured for more than just a couple of hours; these ecchymoses are dark and large and considering that this is caused by blood internally seeping into the surrounding tissue the woman has been alive for a relevant amount of time before she passed. Also, bear in mind those-"

Hotch interrupted the genius' explanation harshly. He sure was glad that they hadn't found Emily's body... yet. A woman who looked a lot like their friend had died a gruesome death and he had no desire to find himself looking at another body that could barely be identified and to know that this was Emily. "We really need to get going. Doyle is probably doing this to Emily right now."

"Are we following any pattern?"

"No, I'd say we stick to out previous tactic -only that we're really gonna do it this time- and search the rooms one by one." He gave Reid a quizzical look. "Except if you impromptu know a way to make it faster."

The other man only shook his head. "You were pretty clear about not splitting up."

"I just don't want any of us to die down here."

They went through the hallway and Hotch opened another door just to step into a dark, empty room, much like the previous ones. He turned around without thinking about much and, just for a moment, he was nothing but afraid to find Emily - dead or alive. If she was dead he would go through losing her again... and he had lost too many close ones. Could he, could the whole team bear her death once again? Could they burry her, mourn her, go on - until they'd lose another one, until it would start all over again?

And if she was alive... what would he do? She had risen from her grave. It wasn't like anything he had ever had to handle.

Next door.

Incertitude.

Next door.

Darkness.

One by one, just hoping that they would find more of her than her corpse, battered and bruised and slowly cooling down, or one of these shadowy humans whom humanity had been taken from.

Eventually they hadn't been been searching long but had made it almost all the way down the hallway until they had found the romm, or rather cell, which they had been looking for. It was cold, but luckily not as cold as the others since it had been used by people. A man way lying in the left behind corner but judging by the gory state of his skull there was no way he was alive.

They stood still for a moment, staring at Emily who was, tied to a chair, lying on the ground in front of them... and Doyle, lying right next to her. The scene was stranger than what they had been expecting, there was no bullet to be fired, no shot to be taken. All of the sudden they could consider themselves lucky if just one present person was actually alive.

Ashley was the first one to move again, but it was the man whom she approached.

"It's Doyle", she exclaimed and softly put her index and middle finger against his throat to feel his pulse, "and he's alive."

Reid shivered as he observed how she routinly began to check his body, piling up several firearms and a knife next to her, but, to bew safe, way out of Doyle's reach. Simultaneously Hotch had kneeled down next to Emily, givin them the answer they were much more eagerly waiting for.

"She's alive!" They were exhaling at almost the exact same moment and Reid moved to join his boss as this began to losed the cable ties she had been restrained with. The touch to her skin was concerningly icy and now that he was closer to her Reir realized that she's alive wasn't the whole truth. Half alive would not have been it either. Her breath seemed to be even less than faint, her skin almost as pale as that of a dead person.

He pointed at her armpits. "He gave her something."

He glanced in Doyle's direction. Ashley has left him lying there; they had more important things to do than care about his life. She was looking at the tray with syringes, hoping to find a labled container to identify what Emily had been given. There wer none.

"Has he been given an overdose, too?", she asked confusedly, nodding towards to white foam in front of Doyle's mouth.

"The syringe is still in his arm... I guess he injected it by himself."

"So first he drugged Emily and then himself?" She didn't quiete see any logic behind it. "Why would he do that?"

"He probably didn't think Emily was still alive or expected her to be dead soon. We all know she hasn't told him anything about Deklan so what in he left with? A dead FBI Agend, the FBI, us who'd hunt him to hell and back... and no son."

She swallowed. "He was desperate."

Reid huffed ironically. "If terrorism has ever lead people to happiness I haven't heared of it yet."

"As soon as the EMTs get here they'll do whatever they can", Hotch said and swallowed hard, facing the bitter truth, "for the both of them. They won't put Emily first and if we're really out of luck... they'll probably get to save them both."

"Or worse", Reid added, barely mouthing the words. His voice seemed to echo is the quiete room though. It didn't take an IQ as high as his to make out the most obvious option there was. He looked at Hotch and Ashley and lowered his eyes, knowing they were thinking the same. The man to his feet gasped quietly and Reid could not inhibit himself from blushing. That he even took this in consideration, that he dared sparing seriously more than a single, faint thought on this should embarrass everyone calling himself a man... and yet, who was he to deny the temptation?

"For a friend?", he slowly began, refusing to look into te eyes of neither Ashley nor Hotch. Opening his mouth to continue he realized he couldn't. What was he to present, tell, ask them? And he didn't had to.

"She didn't tell us anything to protect us", Ashley shyly continued the thought, even though she hadn't been as close with Emily as the rest of the team, "She went that far for us... twice. We'd go just as far for her, wouldn't we?"

"Could we", Reid interjected, "we're... we're with the FBI, goddammit, it wouldn't be just."

"Are you here because your job coincidentally lead you here or because you've known her for years? Would you rather be with the FBI than with her?"

Two pairs of eyes were lying on Hotch as they quietly decided that he was to have the final word on this. He opened his mouth, then closed it again to have another look at Doyle.

"I don't know."

The piercing sound of a blaring siren brought them back to reality.

"That's the EMTs. I'll tell them we found two people in a critical state and direct them here", Reid mumbled, " do what you think is right." Saying this, he turned around and sprinted down the hallway.