Lauren (S6E18)

The death of a beloved is an amputation - C.S. Lewis

Rossi gazed blankly at Emily's coffin. The irony had not escaped him.

There he stood, surrounded by people grieving for a live woman everyone else thought dead, while he was grieving for a dead woman everyone else thought was still alive. If they gave her a second thought at all.

Hope, Rossi had decided, was a fickle, untrustworthy thing. What had buoyed him up, crippled him instead. What had helped him sleep, kept him awake. Hope. Such a small word that held so many connotations, the potential for so much joy and so much pain.

Rossi had given up on hope.

Hope was a black hole of devastation. What was once so bright had turned murky and consumed everything. For every sliver of hope that had faded away never to be seen again, the remainder had felt exponentially heavier and darker.

Hope had convinced him of continuing communication from Pip.

Hope had convinced him that he'd be able to trace the notes he'd thought he'd receive, giving him clues as to where she might be.

Hope had convinced him that they still had a chance, once she returned from whatever it was that she was doing. That he could convince her to change her mind.

Hope had convinced him she was still alive.

He had hoped, and hope had fucked him. Royally.

It had been more than six months since he'd heard from Pip. The drawing she'd sent had been the only one, his prayer for at least semi-regular contact had gone unanswered. There had been days he'd decided it was a good thing, that he'd rather not know the worst when the communication abruptly ceased. Then there were the days he'd desperately wished he knew if she was still there, or if the reason he hadn't received anything else from her was because the worst had already happened.

Hope. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Rossi certainly felt damned. Cursed, even.

Work had gone on without Pip, obviously. But some of the thrill had gone from the chase. There were days Rossi felt like he was just going through the motions.

He didn't have a Bucket List, and hiking the Appalachian Trail wouldn't have been on it even before the BAU had to hunt down a man abusing young boys up and down its length. It certainly wasn't on Rossi's to-do list now they knew there was a serial killer traversing the path. They'd saved the boy but lost the UnSub.

Ashley Seaver would turn out as a first-class Agent one day, he could see that from the way she behaved in New Mexico. Beauchamp's daughter, all grown up. Her serial killer father would be spinning in his grave but for the lack of capital punishment in North Dakota. Brave and fearless, she'd walked straight into danger and used her personal experience of serial killers to make Drew Jacobs pause long enough for the rest of the team to get to her.

A modern-day Bonnie & Clyde in Montana, murdering as they moved. He'd lost count in the end of how many they'd slain as they travelled across state.

And then Ian Doyle had arrived to make life even more difficult and the world had collapsed down around his ears.

It had just been the angle of view from where he was sitting as they consoled themselves, after JJ gave them the bad news about Emily. Chance, or perhaps it had been deliberate. Whatever the reason, Rossi had seen JJ and Hotch talking. JJ's eyes had flickered over to Rossi once Hotch turned away, and she'd held his gaze, apparently glad he'd seen them. There was a message there, if only he could decipher it. It had taken a while, but he'd worked out that Emily hadn't really died on the table and thought that was the answer to the mystery. He just didn't understand why JJ had wanted him to know.

She'd found him hiding in his office many hours later, morosely staring out the window with a glass of scotch in his hand. It was stupid-o'clock in the morning and he was drinking the last of the bottle Pip had bought for him, trying to banish some of the darkness of his thoughts.

"Dave?" JJ said from the doorway. "I'm sorry."

"Really?" he asked bitterly. "You lied to me. To all of us," he hissed, trying not to raise his voice while the door was open. He didn't know who else was around, somehow he'd lost track of several hours and the comings and goings of the people that had still been there when he'd stomped into his office in search of a drink to calm himself.

JJ closed the door behind her and walked over to stand beside him at the window. "Sometimes it's necessary to do things to make a cover story deep enough."

"And yet, here you are, apologising for it," snapped Rossi, her softly knowing tone just aggravating him even more. "Why me, JJ? Why not tell everybody she's still alive?"

"The fewer people who know, the better." JJ folded her arms and turned to face him, raising an eyebrow. The softness was gone, replaced with a slightly condescending, harder, motherly sort of expression. "That's how cover stories work," she said slowly, as if pointing out the obvious. "It protects everyone."

She paused, watching his face for a reaction. To what, Rossi didn't know. He hadn't worked that out yet.

"Do you see what I'm saying?" she asked.

Rossi tried to mentally backtrack. JJ hadn't yet mentioned Emily by name, and it was at that point that he started to realise they were having two conversations. One aloud, the other underneath the words being spoken. One that had started as soon as JJ met his eyes after getting a phone call earlier, while they were still at the hospital waiting for news on Emily.

But Rossi was tired and pissed off, and just didn't know what it was JJ was trying to tell him. What she'd been trying to tell him all day. "To put them through burying her…" he said instead, focussing on Emily, the conversation he understood. He turned away from the window, moving to put his tumbler down on his desk. "You're going to make them grieve," he spat. "They may never forgive you. Or her, for that matter, for making them bury an empty coffin."

"It's better than not being able to do it at all," said JJ softly. He turned as he heard her move closer, carefully, like he was a new-born colt about to bolt for the door. "When someone is missing in action and presumed dead, it's even worse." JJ laid a gentle hand on his arm and met his dark eyes with her blue ones, brimming with knowing sympathy. "Dave, I'm sorry. She's gone." A tear rolled down her cheek, followed by two more. "I'm so sorry."

Rossi actually felt the blood drain from his face and the strength leave his legs. He leaned against his desk lest he fall.

JJ was talking about Pip. That was why she had wanted him to know about Emily.

JJ worked at the Pentagon, was obviously aware and possibly even part of Pip's cover story. If anyone might know if something happened to the woman he loved, it would be JJ. A connection he'd not considered in the months since Pip's departure. JJ was talking about Pip, he had no doubt about it. There was no one else could she possibly mean. Certainly not Emily, she had already all but confirmed that her supposed demise was a fabrication.

She'd tried to soften the blow, but JJ had just given him his notification of Pip's death.

Oh God. He took it all back. Not knowing was infinitely better.

"No." The hoarse sound that emerged from his throat was unrecognisable as belonging to him, but flat-out denial was more appealing than entertaining the possibility JJ was right. Rossi slumped sideways, landing in the seat in front of his desk more by luck than judgement. He covered his suddenly burning eyes with a hand that shook, badly.

"She's coming back, JJ. She has to come back," he whispered, feeling the dream slip through his fingers like smoke.

JJ laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "She can't, Dave."

"You're sure?" he asked thickly, his voice cracking around the lump in his throat. Not that he particularly wanted to hear it confirmed.

"No." JJ sighed heavily. "We may never find out for sure, but she's not where she's supposed to be. Under the circumstances, even without a body, that can really only mean one thing." The hand on his shoulder tightened. "She asked me to tell you if…if she couldn't come back. I'm so sorry. I know she loved you very much."

She'd left him in his office, bowed and broken with despair.

In a peculiar way, JJ had done him a favour. With Emily's death as a disguise, he'd been able to openly mourn for Pip, camouflaged among the team mourning for Emily.

The remainder of the funeral was horrendous. He'd laid a flower on the coffin, a rose like everyone else, but with an apple leaf tangled in the thorns. Apple for his Pip, like she'd drawn for him. All Rossi could think was that she might never have a funeral, never have the line of mourners to pay their respects. People like him. JP and Mark. Garcia. Phillips, Griffin and Duffy. Hotch and the rest of the team. His gesture was a small one, but at least it was something.

JJ met his eyes briefly, the slightest of nods telling him that she'd seen what he'd done and shared in his pain. Rossi turned away, unable to formulate a response that wouldn't involve bawling like a child. Pip could be anywhere, may never be found. He tried valiantly to banish thoughts of her body being savaged by carrion eaters or rotting quietly in a nameless ditch somewhere, as Emily's empty coffin was laid to rest.

That night as he tried to sleep, those images morphed into something far worse: Pip still alive but being tortured for information, or injured far from help and dying a slow, agonised death.

Unable to face those thoughts alone, rattling around in his huge house with nobody except for his dog for company; Rossi packed a bag in the middle of the night and left. He spent the next ten days with Mudgie camped out in Pip's apartment. Somehow, he didn't feel quite so alone there.