Devil's Night (S6E6)

I've always felt there is something sacred in a piece of paper that travels the earth from hand to hand, head to head, heart to heart - Robert Michael Pyle

Rossi dragged himself into work, but just sat in his car, staring unseeing through the windshield. It had been a month since Pip left, just under that since JJ left, and the team was starting to adapt to the gap their departures had left behind. Garcia and Hotch were sharing the liaison role, as if they didn't have enough work to do already. In the normal course of things, Hotch had admitted, he would have asked Pip to field some of the paperwork that went with it. There was no way Phillips could handle it on top of everything else. AST were struggling.

They had lost their leader, who had also been their weapons and language specialist. Phillips was competent in both areas, but he had also been left with the task of teaching the two newer members of the team, all while assuming a leadership role he didn't want. Hotch was unwilling to add to his workload. Duffy was still so wet behind the ears Rossi had bought Pip a sponge as a joke only a few days before she'd left. He was a good lawyer, but still new to the ways of the BAU. In the circumstances, Strauss had graciously agreed that Duffy could stay as Pip requested. Rossi had wondered mean-spiritedly if that was just because Strauss didn't want to have two awkward recruitment processes underway at the same time, rather than any real sense of altruism.

Finding someone to fill Pip's shoes would be even more difficult than finding Duffy had been, and Rossi hadn't appreciated until then that for some obscure procedural reason lost in the mists of time, the AST team leader had to be a former field Agent. Finding one who wanted to retire to a desk, one who had the skills necessary…it would be a while before someone other than Phillips was in charge.

Even when they found someone, it wouldn't be Pip, who'd run AST with an iron fist in a velvet glove. Pip's fierce protectiveness of her team and firm but generous nature had completely endeared her to them. Her team had loved and respected her, while still fearing her wrath and temper. They knew she loved and respected them in return. Even Duffy, who'd met both extremes of the Pip personality spectrum, good and bad, in one day.

They'd worked their hardest for her because they hadn't wanted to disappoint her. Something Rossi could identify with. He'd honoured her request to look out for the three young men sat at the back of the bullpen, enough to know that they missed her terribly, and not just on a professional level.

Same as he did. His vacation time, which he'd planned to use working on his book in order to distract himself from Pip's absence, was cut short by the Butcher, another ghost from the past. Rossi knew he'd nearly caught him, all those years ago, and was convinced the new crimes involved him somehow.

Finally coming face to face with the creep hadn't brought any satisfaction though, the monster revealed as a querulous old man who'd pissed his boxers when they breached the house. But laying that case to rest had helped with the writer's block, and Rossi finally had his distraction from the chestnut-haired firecracker he missed so desperately.

A month had dulled the sharp edge of that last conversation with Pip, but it hadn't buried the heartache entirely. Rossi would still glance at her vacant desk as they returned from a case. He would still look up from his work and expect to see her flouncing into his office when the door opened. He'd stopped going to Mama Rosa's, and had managed to resist calling her old cell just to hear her on the voicemail greeting. But he still spent a lot of time at her apartment.

He was there often enough to become quite friendly with the other occupants of her building. Todd Hollands owned the freehold on the whole house, having been left it in his paternal grandmother's will. He shared the second floor with his best friend, Leon Pinter. Both guys had huge trust funds, loaded with more money than they could conceivably spend in several lifetimes. Third sons with no hope of being involved in the family businesses, both were content to just bum around, doing little other than playing video games and smoking weed. They were friendly and harmless, and Rossi was on quite good terms with them. Enough that they didn't question his odd comings and goings.

Mrs Crabtree and Poppy, the scruffy, watery-eyed mongrel that was Mrs Crabtree's pride and joy, inhabited the ground floor. It was a legacy arrangement, one that had been part of the clause that had left the house to Todd in the first place. Mrs Crabtree had been his grandmother's best friend and when she'd passed, Beryl Hollands had asked that her friend Dorothy be allowed to live there for the rest of her days. The ground floor always smelled of old people and piss, with a side order of dog shit and second-hand cabbage. It was usually a relief when the smell of pot overwhelmed the nose about halfway up the stairs.

Dorothy Crabtree was mostly blind and almost completely deaf, possibly a blessing considering the high-pitched yap of the little shit machine she owned that regularly left turds in the hallway for other residents to stand in. Pip had always called them "land mines" and it wasn't far off the truth. There was always one where you'd least expect it. Mrs Crabtree did make good cookies though; Rossi was aware that spending too much time at Pip's place could spell trouble for his waistline.

Amongst other things.

He knew it was probably unhealthy to keep going back there, obsessing over Pip: where she was, what she was doing, but Rossi justified it in his mind by telling himself that when she came back, she wouldn't want the spiders to have moved in. Realistically, it was because he figured that potentially the only way he'd find out if anything untoward happened to her, would be when her utilities were cut off. It wasn't like anyone would know to tell him if something went wrong, he wasn't supposed to know she was gone. If she was dead, she'd no longer be getting a salary, and eventually, the bills would go unpaid. All the time the lights still worked, he could keep hoping.

It was a spectacularly illogical piece of thinking, but he was sticking with it.

Hope, that was bridging factor in his flawed logic. Once his initial surge of anguish had passed, Rossi had decided on hope. Hoping she would come back, hoping they could still have something together. Hoping she was still alive. She had said her chances were even and he'd won on much worse odds before.

Sometimes he could even manage a whole day without thinking about her. Wondering where she was, if she was still among the living. Wondering if she was thinking about him. Hope would be a heavy burden to bear. The heaviest one he'd shouldered in his life, he knew that, but he'd bear it willingly. For her.

Deciding he'd sat moping in his car long enough, Rossi made an effort to pull himself together so it at least looked like he'd get some work done. He ended up catching Hotch by the elevator. His friend was just standing there staring into middle distance, brows furrowed in cogitation. A pose probably not dissimilar to the one Rossi himself had been wearing only ten minutes previously.

"Morning Aaron." Hotch made no reply. "Hotch?" Rossi followed that up with a gentle elbow to the ribs.

Hotch seemed to come back to himself a little and pressed the elevator call button.

"That was peculiar," he muttered absently.

"Everything ok?" asked Rossi as they travelled upwards.

Hotch nodded. "Yes, just…odd," he said, still deep in thought. "I just had the strangest conversation, with a girl carrying a black lace parasol, wearing so many chains and spikes that she jingled as she walked."

Rossi smirked. Hotch, flummoxed by a woman. How wonderfully unexpected.

"Well, what did she say?" he asked curiously when Hotch made no effort to add anything further.

Hotch shuddered a little. "Too much. I only caught about half of it. It was like talking to Garcia when she's overdone the caffeine."

A conversation and a half then. Rossi chuckled, he'd only met the over-caffeinated version of Garcia once. It had been a late night and Pip had shared her super-strength coffee with the analyst, against his advice. The experience that followed had been enough to give him nightmares for three nights running. Garcia was chirpy and hyperactive at the best of times, multiplying that by any means was downright terrifying. No wonder Hotch had shuddered. Rossi grinned at the expression on Hotch's face, but the grin faded in confusion as Hotch held out a brown internal mail envelope.

"I almost forgot. She asked me to give this to you," said Hotch, clearly as bewildered as Rossi was. "Something about returning a favour on behalf of the Navy. She said you'd know what that meant."

He did. Sort of. With the Navy connection, the description of the woman Hotch had met bore a remarkable resemblance to how Pip had described her forensic scientist friend in D.C., but that favour…that had been Pip, not him.

Wearing his own confused frown, Rossi took the proffered envelope and peered at the contents. Inside was a grubby, battered envelope. Once, it had probably been white, but now it was covered in smudged fingerprints, what he sincerely hoped were coffee stains, mud and assorted greasy marks.

Rossi absently handed Hotch the unnecessary outer envelope and started to open the well-worn one that had been inside.

Hotch laid a cautionary hand on his arm. "Don't you think that should be screened before you open it, Dave? Who knows where it's been, or why."

Rossi paused, considering for a moment. "I think I know who your mysterious delivery girl was. This," he waved the envelope, "will have already been through screening at the Navy Yard in DC."

He ripped it open carefully, despite his reassurance to Hotch. Inside was a small off-white piece of card, the side facing him decorated with an amateur biro drawing in red, depicting an apple cut in half. A seed had fallen from the core of the apple.

Not a seed, a pip. Pip.

Rossi laughed. She was alright, and she'd found a way to tell him. Whatever their last interaction meant to her, she still wanted to let him know she was ok. The grin threatened to split his face in half, it felt like it stretched from ear to ear. It was so wide it hurt. Regardless of her mission and the unknown risks it entailed, Pip was alive.

"Care to share?" asked Hotch curiously, attempting to not look like he was trying to peer over Rossi's shoulder to see what had cheered him up so much. Rossi tucked the envelope into a pocket. Hotch was a shade taller than he and could easily sneak a look at the strange delivery if he wanted to.

"Just something from Pip," replied Rossi casually, idly wondering if euphoria usually came with superlative acting skills. He felt like he wanted to dance, shout it from the rooftops, but he'd managed to stand perfectly still and speak off-hand. She was alive, and it felt so good. Hope suddenly felt like a wonderful thing and he wondered why he'd been struggling with it.

"I rather thought you and Harker were beyond the stage of passing love notes," commented Hotch. "A few months ago, you practically lived in her apartment."

Rossi shrugged, biting his cheek firmly to stop the grin re-emerging. "She's been out of state for a while. I've not seen her since the transfer." Technically the truth, but skirting the edges of it a little.

"Oh."

Rossi was saved from further probing by the opening of the elevator doors, and had to restrain himself from practically skipping to his office.

With his door closed for some privacy, Rossi re-examined the card. Pip's drawing skills weren't stellar by any means, but her hand was fair enough for the rendering of the apple to be a decent representation, even in red biro. He idly flipped the card over and realised she'd also penned a short note on the back.

"Sent 2 weeks in. Safe as can be.

Delivery is payment of favour owing, so now you owe me. Don't go digging."

Rossi smiled at the familiar tone. At least that hadn't changed. She was still bossing him about, even from however many thousands of miles away from him she was. The smile faded a little as he read and re-read the two lines of cursive. She'd made an effort to disguise her handwriting, but he'd recognise her penmanship anywhere – he'd seen enough of it decorating his reports and files. Obviously, she'd broken protocol again to contact him.

It had taken two weeks for the simple note to get to him, presumably via a whole series of people, if the state of the envelope it had arrived in was anything to go by. Passed from hand to hand on the weight of a favour done to a small team based only a handful of miles away in Washington, so long ago Rossi had forgotten about it. There would be no possibility of working out where it came from or where it had been.

And she'd told him not to try. She'd even underlined it twice.

The card ended up in his wallet, so he could keep it close as they flew out for another case. Hotch had alerted him from his musings with the expedient method of knocking on the wall they shared. Since overhearing the row between Pip and Strauss, they'd agreed they'd make use of the flimsiness of the partition to their advantage.

It meant Rossi was the first in the conference room waiting for the rest of the team, and he found himself doodling furiously on his pad as if trying to burn off excess energy. Everything was going to be ok. He knew it, he could just tell. It would all work out.

If anyone had told Rossi twenty years ago he'd get sick of flying across the country in a luxury jet, he'd have laughed at them. Recently, he hated flying home from a case because he knew Pip wouldn't be there to meet him. Flying home from the burnings in Detroit was different. For the first time in a month, Rossi didn't glare out the window the whole way home. He held Pip's drawing in his hands and slept easy, a faint smile lingering on his face.