The heat of the shower wasn't enough to wash off the feeling of disgusting that seemed to permeate her every pore. Jane – Jane hated herself. She wanted to curl up and cry and cry and cry – but she couldn't, because it had been ten days.

Ten days. And she wasted eight of them.

She wasted eight. And Hotch could be dead. And it would be her fault.

Fuck, what was she even gonna do? What could she do? She didn't even know.

There was a knock at the bathroom door, and with a heavy sigh she reluctantly turned off the water, propping her forehead against the slick shower tiles.

"... Jane, are you finished?" JJ's voice came through the door, concern coloring her tone. Jane fumbled for a towel halfheartedly. "You've been in there for almost an hour."

"Any calls from Vine or McCrae?" She called out, voice croaking and cracking as she dried her face.

"No, none," JJ denied, shuffling outside the door. "Ivy, you should really eat something. I could make you some acuka? I saw you had pita. Or maybe cook something – how do eggs sound?"

"I'm not hungry," Jane dismissed, peeling back the bandage from her stomach – examining the wound Desi left in her gut. The last gift her pseudo-mother figure would ever give her. Her only mother figure.

What was it that people joke? Daddy issues made you a people pleaser, mommy issues made you a serial killer?

Jane pushed the thought aside – she hadn't popped any stitches, so she set about drying off and replacing the gauze pad.

"I'm not hungry," Jane repeated, voice stronger this time. " But you should eat. There should be sandwich makings."

"Ivy, you haven't eaten properly for a week, and you were stabbed less two days ago," JJ worried, strained. "Between EMDR, your wound, and – well, Morgan said you vomited yesterday –"

"I'm not one of your kids, Jayje – you don't need to baby me," Jane snapped, aggressively drying her hair; she swiped a hand across the fogged mirror and hated what she saw reflected back at her.

"You know what?" JJ snapped right back, fed up. "I'm not your mother, you sure as hell got that right. But you know what? You're a mother, Jane. You are a mother, and a partner, and a doctor and a goddamn FBI agent – so as messed up as you are right now, you can't afford to wither away and die. Hotch is out there, Jane. And if you want to be able to rush to his side and stitch him back together again, you need to eat."

… fuck.

Jane fixed her towel and opened the door slowly, an apologetic grimace on her face.

"I know you're sorry. You're stressed, I get that," JJ softened at her expression, pulling her close into a hug – patently ignoring Jane's sopping wet hair and lack of pants. "So how about acuka and an apple or something? Then we'll head back to Quantico, okay?"

Jane nodded, accepting her phone silently as JJ passed it to her.

Ugh, she really needed to put on some pants.


"Why start nine years ago?" Morgan asked suddenly.

They were loosely scattered through the round table room, going back over every single detail of the case, desperate to find what they missed. The rest of the team looked up at Derek's words, but Jane was focused on turning her phone over and over in her hands – waiting for Amina's call. Waiting for something. Anything.

She only partially tuned in.

"What do you mean?" Rossi prompted, crossing his arms and leaning back against the table – his leg brushing against her shoulder.

Usually she relished the small comforts, the little things after years of … nothing – but the move was calculated. Too calculated. It was something Rin did to pull her out of her thoughts when they were in a police precinct or a sheriff's department – it was his way of comforting her, when professionalism got in the way of what he would have wanted to do.

Rossi had no right to it.

(She almost let herself believe it was Hotch, warm and alive, just for a second. Then reality jolted back into place like a slap.)

"The notes, the flowers," Morgan continued, gesturing to the timeline on the board. "They started nine years ago – about when, exactly, Jane?"

It took a moment for her to process that the question was aimed at her.

"It was June," Jane sat back, scrubbing at her face and looking at the expectant faces of her team. "Mid-June when I got back and found them just inside the door of my old shitbox apartment."

"When you 'got back'," Blake echoed her words, turning to face her more fully. "Got back from where?"

"Uh … Chicago," Jane blinked. "No, no – it was … Yeah, it was Chicago. I'd been at the bullpen right before, but we'd just flown back from a case… we'd been gone for over a week. I don't know exactly when they arrived."

"I remember that case," Morgan cocked his head, brow furrowed. "That was that strangler duo. The dominant unsub got away, left his partner to take the fall. That was a shitty case – Carson got fired that case."

"I mean, he kinda deserved it," Jane arched an eyebrow at him, receiving a conceding nod in return. "That's also the case that prompted me to start carrying a gun."

"A lot of shit happened that case," Morgan scrubbed at his face. "God, what was the Unsub's name …?"

"... This was the case with the victim gradient, right?" Reid chimed in, whiteboard marker twiddling in between the tips of his fingers. "When it was you two, Gideon, Hotch, and Carson – before he got fired for using Jane as bait."

"Wait, Jane was bait?" JJ exclaimed, completely sidelined. "When was this?"

"Nine years ago – keep up, Blondie," Jane snarked, before her grin slipped off her face at the memory. "Carson's idea, Gideon shot him down but he ran with it anyway. Nearly got the life choked out of me cuz he left me in the dark."

"Jane, can you do something for me?" Spinner asked casually, though there was a note of something in his voice. That edge he had when he was gonna make her do or remember something but didn't want to tip her off on exactly what or how yet. He was digging through a bag for something blindly, one handed as he fixed his gaze on her. "Can you tell me everyone you remember running into that case? Everyone you met, talked to – even if it was just in passing."

"Ummm, sure?" Jane blinked, glancing at a suddenly very blank-faced Morgan. "Well, I went with the team, you already listed them. I met the city ME – Marcel? Martel? – and a couple of interns I don't remember the name of. One had the worst case of BO I'd smelled on anyone who wasn't actively a corpse. No one else really stood out … I guess I met the captain, a detective or two – but just in passing. Mostly stuck to myself … I met Morgan's family, that was fun. And Maeve stopped by to yell at me – also fun."

"Jane, did you ever run into the Unsub?" Reid asked as he passed the Black Book to Morgan, open to one of the first pages – Derek's eyebrows immediately shot up as he began to read. "He was interviewed by Carson before he fled the police. Did you meet him at all? See him? Did he see you?"

"I don't know, maybe?" Jane sat back, locking eyes with a very intense Rossi as he studied her. "Guys, this was nine years ago – I had only just started to really go into the field. If he wasn't a dead body on my table or actively closing his fists around my throat, I probably don't remember him."

"Give me that," Rossi demanded from a slightly-ill Morgan, receiving the Black Book promptly.

"What is so interesting about that fucking book?" Jane snapped, fed up and on her feet – sick of being the one with the fucked up brain. "Seriously. Don't we know everything in there already? Here's a summary, I'll give it to you for free: I had-slash-have amnesia, I'm Mari Ryden and am therefore a stupid rich traumatized orphan, and I've got PTSD! Ta-dah! What else do you need?"

"Do you know what started this Book?" Reid ignored her frustration and snark, leveling a sympathetic gaze at her – which was dog shit and made her feel like crap for blowing her top. "Do you know why Hotch and Gideon started writing everything down? What prompted them? They wrote it down, it's one of their first entries."

"I thought it was just my general sketchiness," Jane deadpanned.

"No, it was because of this case," Morgan cut in, tired – positively exhausted. "Jane, one of the first entries of the Book was Chicago, when you disassociated in the prescient hallway because you were face to face with one of the Unsubs."

"Ethan Cray," Rossi finished, passing her the Book himself. "Very similar to the name of Elton McCrae Jr., wouldn't you say?"


Hotch knew he was never gonna beat the Unsub physically.

Not because he couldn't – though, admittedly, he was at a disadvantage due to his injuries and from going so long without food – but because the Unsub seemed very, very determined to stay on the other side of the door and just starve Hotch to death. And stare at him.

It seems his confidence in being physically overpowering had waned in the face of Hotch's refusal to be cowed by pain or fear, as his previous victims had been. Hotch wasn't a slip of a young woman who could barely block a punch – he was harder prey and a tougher meal. The Unsub realized too late, the arrogant bastard.

Real time, the Unsub seemed to be trying to set Hotch on ablaze with the heat of his glare alone, again – a pastime which got old three rounds and 24 hours ago.

Time to break the pattern.

"You've been trying to woo her for a very long time," Hotch tilted his head slowly – deliberately– and he smirked oh so slightly. He caught the bored Unsub's attention – intriguing him by being the first to speak. "Pity. Her memories being gone meant that she didn't remember any of the love you had for her – you had to start over. Had to prove to her that you loved her."

"So?" The Unsub, clinging to his well-mannered mask, shrugged languidly.

The Unsub was hooked, though he tried to hide it – but he couldn't resist the challenge, the need to defend himself. Justify himself. That was the problem with offenders like him – they spent so little time face to face with their victims that they never learned how to hide their thoughts, shield their expressions – and they never learned to take it on the chin. The Unsub was probably suave and charming in short bursts, but when you didn't cater to his every desire his facade began to crumble.

Hotch wasn't feeling very catering.

"So, you don't really love her," Hotch declared, challenging and scornful. "You never did. And do you know how I know that?"

"Tell me," The Unsub ground his teeth, desperately trying to reign in his temper – to keep his head longer than Hotch could. Nice try, good effort: not likely. "How do you think you know?"

"Because I recognize you, Ethan," Hotch grinned widely at the startled look the Unsub gave him. "If 'Ethan Cray' even is your real name, which I very much doubt. But names mean very little when you have a profile, and I've had two separate ones going for a very long time – overlapping more and more until I know you better than you could possibly imagine."

"You didn't recognize me at first," Cray (because even if that wasn't his name, Hotch would bet it was close considering how narcissitic the bastard was) spat. "What tipped you off, huh? How'd you somehow connect me back to a case from over a decade ago?"

"Because you threatened to strangle me," Hotch said as if it was obvious and Cray was just slow – as if he hadn't thought of that day a thousand times over, mystified and frustrated by the bizarreness of Jane's reaction all those years ago in the lobby of a Chicago Police Precinct. But he kept his cool, unaffected even as Cray's anger mounted and his own thoughts raced. "Which brings me back to my original point. Because less than a year after your supposed 'love' died, you moved on like nothing had changed. Like she never existed – you went back to her old home and found some other disposable woman and never thought back on her. You never loved her."

Hotch's voice was rich with accusation. Make him feel like he has to prove himself, and he'll slip up. Make a mistake.

Cray's face hardened. Bingo.

"I did," Cray snapped, hands clutching the bars – face rushed with angry blood. "I went back to Chicago to remember her."

"Oh, I bet you remembered her pretty well, falling in love with Elizabeth Copeman the way you did," Hotch dismissed him acerbically, sharp eyes on Cray's every move. "Real dedicated love you had. You didn't even see her as any different than her grandmother or her mother – 'Elizabeth Copeman' was interchangeable for 'Elizabeth Colemyer', wasn't she? Elizabeth's daughter probably never even crossed your mind –!"

"ENOUGH!" Cray shouted, before he blanched.

He'd lost his cool. Hotch won this round, and they both knew it.


Jane felt flat footed. She gritted her jaw, shaking herself back into the moment.

"... The flowers started nine years ago because he realized I was alive nine years ago," Jane snapped the Book shut roughly, tossing it – letting it skid across the table. "That's how he found me."

"Hey, no no – this is good," Garcia cut in, fingers flying over the keyboard. "This can be very good – because if you guys never realized that his ID was fake then that means that it was very good."

"So?" JJ crossed the room to look over Garcia's shoulder.

What does that tell us?" Blake chimed in, doing the same. "Is that helpful?"

"Blakie-pie, you –" Garcia huffed, disgruntled with the rest of the team's lack of knowledge. "Okay, so you're trying to make the perfect ID, right? You need to get everything – Social Security number, driver's license, birth certificate – to pass test after test, right? How do you do that?"

"You have trial runs," Reid caught on first. "You try other IDs before you sell them – the trials go for a lower price range, if you end up selling them at all."

"Got it in one, Junior G-Man," Garcia grinned. "Okay, so I'm looking Mr. Cray over … and with modern technology and a deep dive, this is very much a fake ID – though admittedly a good one. Who chooses the name Ethan over Elton anyway … I'm getting off topic, nevermind. Though really –"

"Garcia," Jane cut in, the colorful analyst testing her patience. "We're kinda on a clock here."

"Yes, sorry — so sorry," Garcia centered herself. "Modern forgers have to adapt, but in order to do that many have to get caught first. Or almost caught. If this outdated ID hasn't been updated – which it hasn't – then it means that the identity has become obsolete. Therefore, –"

"You backtrack other obsolete identities with the same markers to cross check them against arrests made," Morgan finished her thought, a grimmly satisfied look on his face. "Brilliant, Baby Girl."

"Oh my – Derek Morgan," Garcia quipped distractedly as her keyboard clacked. "Never let anyone tell you you're just a pretty face, Thunder-Love. That was lightning quick."

"I know, Baby Girl," Morgan dropped a kiss on her head. "How's it coming?"

"I am –" Garcia started, before she yelped – her hands flying up to shoulder height. "Rude!"

"What is it– is it McCrae?" Jane demanded, jumping to her feet – hand still clenched around her phone.

A phone which started ringing.

She picks it up in a heartbeat, before she considers that it might be Him. Before she can get a word out, Rossi wrestles the cell out of her hand to put on speaker.

"Don't mind if I just step in here," Amina's voice sounded, laden with snark. "Honestly, Penny-pot – I thought you'd have better security on your system than that."

"You absolute jerk," Garcia snarled, wrestling with her computer with a scowl. "How long have you had a remote override in my system?"

"How long has my sister-in-law been working for you?" Vine quipped back. "Don't worry, this is only the second time I've used it."

Deadly silence. Garcia looked livid. "And when – exactly – was the first?" The colorful woman hissed with fury.

"Now, what would be the fun in that?" Jane could practically hear Amina's eye roll. "Anyway, your trail's a dead end. Better luck next time – I recognize the work. It's Mikal Brosky's – some of his early shit, the baby faced fetus."

"Well darn," Garcia gritted her teeth. "I hear his funeral was lovely and the NSA double checked the casket."

"It was beautiful. They had white carnations and cheap box booze," Amina deadpanned. "So: dead end there."

"So are we back at square one, then?" Jane finally cut in, fists clenched.

"Ivy! Wondered when you'd join us," Vine laughed sunnily. "And no, we're not back at zero. In fact, I'm claiming that we're square after this – I've got enough to land us mutually debt-free."

"Sure, I'll bet," Jane spat, voice dripping with scorn. "Give me something good before I start making empty promises, how about it?"

"Well –" Vite began, and the whole team leaned in closer. "Turns out that once the more traditional methods were exhausted for finding my niece, Elton Fuckwad decided to recruit a well-paid proxy to investigate on the behalf of both him and Colemyer Consolidated. Lots of money changed hands under the guise of 'discretion' but it was just the fucker throwing money at the problem. It went nowhere, obviously."

"And the proxy?" Blake asked. "You said 'on the behalf of' – he works at Colemyer?"

"Indeed he does," Vite shot back. "Ivy, I hope you weren't especially attached to Colemyer Board Member Johan Meadowes?"

"... I knew that bastard was a creep," Jane felt unreasonably vindicated, shitty as the whole situation was. "He's the one whose been trying to hunt down my kid?"

"Very much so," Vine confirmed. "But fret not, a single name is not all I'm giving you. In all of your inboxes are two documents. First are the names, Social Security numbers, and current addresses of all the people Meadowes bribed to get shit done; I threw in a full timeline of his very much illegal actions, too, just for kicks. Plus, for a real bonus, enough evidence to put each and every dirty creep in front of a judge. You're welcome."

Profilers were reaching for their tablets.

"And the second one?" Jane ignored them, dissatisfied with the info so far.

"The second one is a list of people Meadowes was in contact with that McCrae was pulling the strings for, along with a shit ton of more evidence. Took a lot of trojan horses and honeypots and a good number of morally questionable coding alterations – but I got it done," Vine presented smuggly. "By the way, Spinner dear? You're gonna need a new doorman."

"I'm sorry, what?" Spencer yelped, but it was ignored.

"You give me a bunch of turn coats and you think that's worth over a decade of lies?" Jane huffs, unimpressed. "Nice try, but no."

"Oh, still not impressed?" Vite snorted, unsurprised. "Fine, how about this?"

Inboxes chimed.

"This is every location even remotely tied to McCrae, Meadowes, and every person they've blackmailed or bribed," Jane glanced over Rossi's shoulder as he scrolled through the list of over 1,000 names and locations. "I can't do everything for you, Jane – but I did what you asked, and then some. Hotchner is at one of these places. I've done my due diligence. We're done, Ivy. We're done."

Jane looked at the list.

"We're even," She declared flatly, still not satisfied but knowing she couldn't ask for more. "I never want to see or hear from either you or Andy again, Amina. And I mean that."

"... For what it's worth, Jane, I'm sorry," Amina sighed, breath crackling down the line. "I did what I thought I had to do."

"Goodbye, Vine," Jane felt her chest tighten. "Good luck."

"You too."

The line clicked.

"Let's go pick up Meadowes," Rossi cut into the silence.


Now, Cray was going to try and reclaim his status. His pride – his high horse. This is where it got tricky.

"I tried to love Copeman like I loved Lotus but it didn't work," Cray spoke low and flat. "She wasn't right. Lotus was perfect. She and I – we were having a baby and we were going to be the perfect family."

'The family I never had' – that's what he didn't say. He wanted to be perfect – the perfect husband, the perfect father, the perfect businessman. That's why Liber warned them that 'he' would take the company from right under them – he probably had someone on the inside, trying to seize what he felt he deserved. An heir with blood ties would only solidify his claim.

"But then Des Liber and those little bratty punks screwed everything up," He gnashed his jaw, fury in every line of his body. "We were going to be happy – the perfect family."

An obsession with the perfect image. Narcissism. He could use that.

(His back twinged in pain, the flower throbbing dully. He pushed on.)

"No matter what you did, no matter how many blood tests you sent out and PIs you paid and whatever else you tried, you never found your kid," Hotch faux sympathized, his stomach flipping with revulsion he kept off his face. "You gave up, didn't you? You had to – you had no choice. You probably thought Liber had finished the job, the jealous bitch."

"So I dated around," Cray said, as if that wasn't code for stalking and terrorizing women. "I thought my Lotus was dead, and Elizabeth Copeman seemed like she was the right one. My second try at love – you know what I mean, Hotchner, you were married once before as well."

Hotch felt his blood boil. As if he and Cray were in any way alike.

No. Anger is bad. Words are your tools, your weapons and your defense. Use them. Easy, Hotchner. Get out of here and back to your family alive.

"When it didn't work out, I just had to kill her – and wrapping my hands around her neck was just so ... satisfying," Cray's fingers curled in memory, a sick smile on his face – lost in a distant memory.

"But it wasn't enough," Hotch brought him back to, nudging and leading and steering to get him right where he wanted him. Right to the pitfall. "Once wasn't enough, and she was gone, and you and all those other women –"

"There hasn't been anyone since," Cray insisted, defensive. "Not since I saw her that day. There has been no one else – no one else was the same."

"You're just proving my point," Hotch laughed, sharp and relaxed. "You were disloyal. You cheated on her. And now you're trying desperately to make up for it, with flowers and notes and acts to prove your love – but you saw how she reacted to you, in Chicago. She knows you betrayed her. Why else would she allow herself to fall in love with me?"

Play to his delusion. Play to his delusion, obscure the leaps in logic and the misaligned facts. Play to his delusion – and don't puke while you do it. He's just a stalker. At the end of the day, he is just a very dangerous stalker.

"She knows I love her," Cray insists, but there's a crack in his wall.

"Then how come even as you've been wooing her for ten years, when she recovered her memories – knew how much you betrayed your love – she still came home to me?" Hotch was relentless.

"She –"

"You never came to see her in person," Hotch drilled on. "You never asked her out or took her to dinner. You never sat up late watching movies with her, or went on walks at midnight through the park because neither of you could sleep. She never came back to you because you were too cowardly to love her right."

"I did see her!" Cray insisted, and Hotch is so thrown by his surety and insistence that he realizes that he messed up. Somewhere, his reasoning went awry. "I saved her life."

What had he missed?

If Jane had seen the Unsub, she would've been a wreck. Chicago triggered her fight or flight response, but she had barely any contact with Cray. If she had interacted any more than that – enough for him to 'save her life' – when her mental blocks were weakening, then she would've been ...

Jane never mentioned it. The flowers and the notes were an tolerable threat. Ignore it until it goes away, flowers can't hurt you. But a person – she would've said something. Hotch had to believe that, that she would've said something.

So if she didn't, then that meant that she either didn't realize it was him – unlikely – or it never happened – also unlikely – or …

That she didn't remember it.

Jane doesn't remember things for three reasons: her amnesia, mundane poor recall, or pharmaceuticals. If this was after she got amnesia and was too huge to be easily forgotten like getting gas or taking the trash out ... then that meant that Jane forgot because she was drugged up.

Traumatic event, Jane's life needed saving, she was alone at the time, and she was drugged –

Shit.

"What, so sweeping in when the Boston Reaper stabbed me in the gut somehow makes up for years that you missed?" Hotch cut in after a barely too long pause, his brian in overdrive. "You do realize that she doesn't remember that, right? She was high as a kite – you know she doesn't remember things well on pain meds. Or do you? Maybe that's another thing you missed after abandoning her."

Cray's eyes flashed at the word 'abandoning' – good.

Selfishness and unrequited love, isn't that what the flower Cray carved into Hotch's back meant? But hypocrisy is often a powerful tool for a profiler. The coward calls others a coward, the insecure insult others' insecurities.

The Unsub carried on with the delusion that he was the perfect lover, the perfect man. And that he, given the chance, would be the perfect father. Hotch was, in Cray's eyes, all of that already – but only on the surface. Cray saw himself in Hotch, but his eyes focused on the cracks in the mirror – on the flaws he perceived in them both.

So Hotch did what he did best. Manipulated criminals until they act out to try and prove themselves right or better. And all the while, making them think that the ideas he fed them were their own all along.

Cray stormed off, pissed and angry and full of self loathing – disgusted and furious at the thought that he may have become like whoever it was that abandoned him. And as he stormed off, no doubt he was bombarded with memories of every time he wasn't there, for Jane. Every time he didn't 'show her his love.'

And every time whoever disappeared wasn't there for him.

And now, he would have to go and correct that. And distance wasn't acceptable, oh no. Because Hotch won by having no distance at all. Eating at her table and working in her space – so Cray had to be that. He had to be with her.

Hotch knew his team. They wouldn't let Jane go anywhere alone. She would be protected.

Which was good, because Cray was coming to them.