AN: This is an immediately sequel to Nothing Beautiful About the Wreckage. I would recommend reading that first.

Chapter 1

The case today is only a four-hour drive and in a little town that doesn't have an airport within an hour, so drive they do this time. JJ glances over at Ed, who is looking at his phone, frowning, again . She's never seen him so attached to it before, but she knows that look.

"Is Mustang still upset?" she asks.

Ed starts and puts away the phone. "Yeah," he says, sounding resigned. "I wish you hadn't told him I ran into the fire—"

"But you did— "

"Not the point," he snaps, then gives her a cold glare. JJ's never been on the receiving end of that glare before. "I know you don't like Roy. I know you don't like that I'm with him, so don't think I don't know there's a little part of you that's pleased that we're still…" He trails off, propping his elbow against the side of the car and leaning his head against his hand, staring out the window.

Stung, JJ looks at Ed, really looks at him before she says anything. He's drawn, with bags under his eyes, so he hasn't been sleeping well in the two days since they learned about his prosthetics. His hair in its usual braid, but something about it seems particularly tight. His shoulders are slumped in a way that she only saw when Mustang first stomped out. He looks defeated.

"Are you still fighting?" she asks gently.

"You have to talk to each other to fight," Ed says.

The worst part is—Ed's not wrong. Part of JJ, a not as tiny part as maybe it should be, is relieved by the prospect of Ed and Mustang breaking up. She hates what it's obviously doing to Ed, and it's somehow wrong that Mustang might be the one to leave, but all of her training says that the relationship can't possibly be healthy. And that part of her? That part of her hopes that Mustang has packed up and left by the time Ed gets home.

Seeing the toll that their strained relationship is taking on Ed makes her moral high ground feel hollow though.

"We weren't trying to hurt you," she says.

"Road to hell and all that," he replies, still cold, but with less bite than she expects. It's almost worse for its resignation. As if he shouldn't expect better than for them to do harm when they were trying to help.

Emily puts the car in park—they've arrived at their destination. She turns around to look between the seats. "Hey," she says. "We're a team. If you don't want to be here—"

Ed gets out of the car without letting her finish, slamming the door behind him with enough force to rock the SUV. That he managed to hide that prosthetic for so long is a little unnerving if JJ is honest.

"What the hell is his problem?" Emily asks.

JJ sighs. "Ed didn't sign up for the BAU. Rossi recruited him, and he took some convincing from what I understand," she explains.

"There are tons of people who want to be on this team. If he's not one of them, he should step aside."

Part of JJ agrees with Emily, but JJ has also worked with Ed for nearly three years now, and she knows what an asset he's been to the team. She doesn't think Rossi was wrong to recruit him, but Ed's reticence makes more sense in light of his recent revelations.

Rather than continuing the fight, JJ says, "Let's just focus on the case," and gets out.

.o0o.o0o.o0o.

This has been one of those cases where they really didn't know what they were walking into. Some sort of mass killing and weird symbols and what was pretty much a "you're close enough, please just come help, we're in over our heads" message. Dave kind of hates those messages. They always lead to the strangest cases.

"It's… really weird," the local deputy, Annabelle Crawford, tells them as she escorts them past the tape and into the barn.

"We've probably seen weirder," Morgan tells her.

Dave gets a good look at the giant circle on the ground and seven people dead around the edge of it. "I don't know, Morgan. This might be pretty high up the list," he says. The barn reeks because these people have been dead for at least a few days.

"Satanists?" Crawford asks. Got to love small-town police.

"Unlikely," Reid volunteers automatically. "The Satanist hysteria from the late eighties and early nineties was just that, hysteria. We don't have any genuinely Satanic killings on record, mass or otherwise." He walks around part of the circle as he speaks. "That said, this is obviously ritualistic in nature."

"Considering…" Crawford motions in general. "We didn't want to move the bodies before you got here."

"What's in the center?" Reid asks, moving to step into the circle.

" Don't touch it! " Ed's voice cracks through the room, and they all turn to him in surprise. He's dangerously pale staring at the circle in abject horror. His eyes find Crawford and he demands, "Has anyone touched the circle?"

"No. Just the bodies," she says, as unnerved by the wild panic in Ed's eyes as Dave is sure the rest of them are. Dave has never seen Ed be unnerved or frightened by anything they've seen in his time in the BAU—to the point where Ed's lack of reaction has been commented on numerous times. This circle, gruesome as it is, shouldn't evoke this kind of response.

Unless Ed knows what it's meant to do. Unless Ed believes that it can do something.

Ed shoves his way past them, walking around the edge of the circle quickly, not touching the bodies or the circle itself, his eyes tracing every line of it.

"You just touched the bodies?" he asks.

"To confirm they were all dead," Crawford answers.

Ed's brow tightens as he frowns. Whatever those symbols in the circle are, they mean something to Ed.

All of the sudden, his shoulders relax, and he sighs. "Fuck," he says, kneeling down next to a body of a young woman. Even in death, the expression on her face is one of fear. Ed moves her hand and reaches over to close her eyes. "She was the last one to die," he says softly, sadly. Beneath her hand, part of the circle has been erased, as if she had dug her fingers into the dirt floor and carved a hole out. "She broke it. Disrupted it. It's safe to move in. Just—make sure no one completes it," he says. "But to be extra sure, we should take a broom to the center and break it all the way through."

"You don't really think—" Reid starts, then cuts himself off. Dave doesn't blame him, because what Ed's saying, what he's implying, they sound crazy. They make Ed sound crazy.

"I think that someone thought this could be done with human lives to power it. I'd hate to prove him right," Ed says. His eyes are fixed on the tray in the center of the circle. He looks… haunted.

"What's he trying to do?" Morgan asks. "Get immortality? Does he think this will give him super powers or something?"

"We're looking for someone who has lost a loved one. Maybe not recently." Ed's eyes trail around the circle again. "Not recently," he decides. "Probably ten years ago? At least? A child or a family member. Probably a family member. A sibling or maybe a parent. They were lost tragically and unexpectedly, and the unsub never recovered from the loss. Anyone who knows them knows about their loss. They obsess over it. They talk about them constantly." He goes quiet for a moment, then adds, "Or they did. When did the first person go missing?" Ed asks, looking at Crawford.

"If Jackson was the first, he went missing four months ago," she explains. "Went on a hunting trip, just never came back. It happens sometimes, around these parts. I don't think any of the others were locals."

Morgan whistles, because abducting seven people in four months? That's a lot, especially in an area like this.

"If you look back, about four months ago, he stopped talking about it. He became more of a recluse, but he's never been social."

"Wait, you think I know this monster?" Crawford asks.

"He's local. Locals know each other," Ed says, standing. "Especially in rural areas. This is the kind of place you find because you live out here and are bored and have nothing better to do. You don't find this place because you stumbled upon it while you were passing through."

Dave wants to watch Ed, but it's more important to watch Crawford, and given the pensive look on her face, she knows someone who fits Ed's description perfectly. "Let me ask around," is all she says, and she steps out, brushing past JJ and Emily.

They're silent until the team are the only ones there. Ed stares at the circle, but Dave doesn't think he's seeing it. He's holding his right arm as if it hurts, but it's the prosthetic so it shouldn't hurt.

"What's he trying to do with this?" Emily asks, sounding bewildered.

"He's trying to resurrect someone," Ed says, voice tight.

"And he needed seven people to do that?" Dave asks.

"No," Ed says, and he clutches his arm even tighter, prosthetic hand tightly fisted.

"No?" Morgan asks. "Then how many does he think he needs?"

Ed laughs, and it's a humorless sound that makes the hair stand on the back of Dave's neck. "A thousand wouldn't be enough," he says with absolute certainty.

Dave exchanges glances with the other team members because Ed isn't speaking hypothetically. He's talking about this like he has indisputable, excruciating knowledge.

"I can tell you this," Ed says, grim. "He's going to try again. He's too desperate to let this setback stop him."

With that, he turns on his heel and stomps out, dodging JJ's attempt to reach out to him.

They stand there in silence until Prentiss says, "Is anyone else more bothered by Elric's reaction to all of this than the actual crime scene?"

"He's still keeping secrets," Morgan says, looking at Dave.

"Yes, he is," Dave agrees. "And I think it's past time he stop."

.o0o.o0o.o0o.

"C'mon, pick the fuck up. I know you're in class, but I wouldn't fucking bother you if it wasn't important. I know you're mad, but fucking call me, okay? This is… It's our stuff. We might have a way home. Even if you're still pissed off at me or you don't…" He stops and takes a deep breath. "Even if you don't want there to be an us anymore… I think you'd still want to go home, if you can. I'll text you the address. Just… call. Please?"