A/N: So … this was only supposed to be a one shot, but I guess I was in the mood to shatter my own heart a few times around this week. This is set shortly after part one, after everything has fallen apart. Enjoy 3

Nothing you would take

Everything you gave

Hold me 'til I die

Meet you on the other side

He's a shell of himself, or at least that's what he's heard people say when his back is turned. Rumors are rumors, but usually there's at least a shade of truth behind them. And he's heard the whispers, he's seen the way people stare at him when he shows up each day, as pristine and intense as before, yet every day a bit more hollow and pale. They say it gets easier with time, supposedly, but each day, it becomes harder to put one foot in front of the other. Some days, it's hard enough to take a breath.

For the last two months he's watched his team struggle (which is putting it mildly), and yet he's seemingly helpless to all of it, simply because he can't see through his own pain enough to do a goddamn thing. Garcia's upbeat attitude doesn't hide the fact that she can't make it through a day without dissolving into tears. Morgan's determination and steely exterior is an act. Most of his grief is poured into the gym, yet endorphins only last for so long before he too succumbs to the guilt, the what ifs, and the longing for answers. Reid barely hangs on, his eyes blank and his face a perpetual empty canvas, racked with confusion and questions, and Aaron watches him withdraw into himself until there isn't much left. Rossi is the only one who appears to have it together, but Aaron's known him long enough to be the wiser. There's a reason why Dave's office light is always on at night when he leaves to pick up Jack, and it's not because he's doing paperwork. And Ashley - he can't help but think he's failed her. He brought her on only to brush her aside most days now, only because he can't bring himself to care more than he absolutely has to. She holds her own; he's not surprised (she's already a damn good agent), and she tenderly walks the line of the outsider who just happened to stumble upon this close-knit group of people who endured an unspeakable tragedy.

The FBI-appointed shrink they're all mandated to see calls it trauma, and even though he doesn't tell this woman with the kind eyes the truth about his relationship (or whatever it was) with Emily, he doesn't have to. It's obvious from the minute he sits down on the couch, his silence speaking volumes. "You've suffered a great loss," she told him as their first session had ended. "Grief manifests itself in many ways."

And it does. He's no stranger to grief, especially in the last year, but this time, it's raw, relentless, and suffocating, each day breaking him a little more than the last. Apparently there are five stages of grief - and in the wake of her "death" he feels each intensely - an absolute spectrum that renders him speechless and at times breathless. It's like feeling your way through the dark, waiting for a light only to never find one, like waking up every day as a stranger in a foreign land. It leaves him exhausted, and unable to sleep more than an hour or two at a time. Time means nothing - 3 AM could easily be 3 PM, there's little distinction between Saturday and Tuesday, Sunday and Thursday. It all runs together.

Denial comes on quick, and at their first briefing back after her death, (every first without her feels like an item to cross off a fucked up, invisible checklist) he almost tells Garcia to hold off starting because she's on her way. She's just stuck in traffic; Northern Virginia is a parking lot at this hour anyway. She'll be here soon. Garcia just stares at him, her eyes wide, Reid gets up and leaves the room, his hand clamped over his mouth. Only after Rossi reaches out with a comforting hand on his shoulder does he realize they've taken her chair away. She's not coming. She never will.

There's anger; it builds and builds until he can't see straight. It's the blinding rage that overtakes him in the most inopportune moments - when they're giving a profile and he needs to step outside because he can't get enough air or unclench his fists, or when he's having a phone conference with Jack's teacher and suddenly the world stops turning and he has to hang up the phone because he's shaking with rage. The anger at himself for not figuring it out on his own; he knew something was up, and he was too late. Anger at the doctors who worked valiantly to save her, and they did, but couldn't spare her the pain that comes along with healing from an injury as traumatic as the one she endured. The anger he feels for the secrets she kept, for all the ways they failed her.

Bargaining comes late at night, when he's too exhausted to stop thinking for even a few moments of quiet reprieve. If only, he decides, are the two cruelest words in the English language when used together, and he tortures himself through each and every possible scenario he can come up with. If only they had gotten there faster, they could have gotten to Doyle before he impaled her. If only Clyde Easter had talked sooner and they would have pinpointed her location faster. If only he'd been the one to find her on the ground in that cold, dirty warehouse, maybe he could have done something differently. If only he'd pushed her a little more, asked a few more questions, before all hell broke loose. Bargaining is his personal form of hell. There are endless scenarios but no solutions, like an error analysis gone woefully wrong.

Depression isn't part of his vernacular, but he's a profiler for God's sake - he knows the signs- and he fits the criteria as well as the final missing piece of a puzzle. Depression is the messiest because it never goes away. It just hangs there, sometimes a dark cloud, other times it's a hazy, confusing blur, a numbing ache that spreads from his mind to the rest of his body. It's like a constant companion, an inevitable accident he can see coming from a mile away yet is powerless to stop.

Acceptance is the one he refuses to acknowledge, because none of this - none of it - will ever make sense, ever.

"You loved her," the shrink says kindly after more than fifteen minutes of silence one afternoon exactly two and a half months after the day everything fell apart. "It's okay to admit that, you know."

He doesn't admit it, but he doesn't have to.

Through his grief, he knows, all things considered, he was the lucky one. At least he had the chance to say a real goodbye. At least he knows the truth.

Most days, he wishes he didn't.

Knowing is almost harder.

…

April - 2 months ago

"It's time." JJ calls him on a secure line after a completely sleepless night one morning, before he has to put on another brave face for the sake of his team and act as if all of this is normal. "It's happening tonight."

He knows it's coming; this was the choice they made in March, a few weeks ago, in Boston in the middle of a cold trauma room with harsh lighting that reeked of antiseptic and littered with discarded medical supplies. Her blood was still on the floor, puddles here and streaks there, and the handcuffs Doyle had restrained her with are laying there in pieces. Those had been removed with metal cutters. He recoiled at the sight of it all.

She'd made it but just barely; and according to the harried surgeon who gave them all but two minutes of her time in a mad dash to get Emily to the OR, they're nowhere near out of the woods. Something about blood loss, a ruptured spleen, and of course, the risks of infection, trauma, shock, blood clots. The list goes on, but he tunes it out. The chance of anything less than her leaving this place alive isn't an option.

Watching her come out of it just about rips him into pieces. At first Emily is heavily sedated, which is a relief, but they've been warned just how much pain she'll be in when she first wakes up. She breathes on her own and the tubes are removed almost immediately after her surgery, but the doctors were right. It's a pain like no other - a gripping, all - consuming pain, and the morphine drip is the only thing that brings her any relief. They exchange a few words here and there but most of it she won't remember, and when he has to leave Boston a day after the rest of them, it's like he leaves a piece of his heart there too.

Emily is transferred to Bethesda under a covert exfiltration a few days later - he's not there for the medivac departure but JJ sends him updates every thirty minutes. Every spare moment he can find, he checks that damn scrambled phone hidden in his pocket while he sits in meetings all day. No one even seems to notice he's falling apart at the seams all damn day- they're all blinded by their own grief. It's still too fresh; they don't belong here.

He goes straight to the hospital once the plane lands. It's a near miracle there isn't an accident along the way. His credentials get him past the reception desk and multiple wings until he reaches her room on the fifth floor. The heavily armed guards are about to stop him when JJ emerges from behind the door, her hair in a messy ponytail and her eyes lined with dark circles.

"Emily's in a lot of pain, Hotch," she says, sounding exhausted and looking even more so. "It was a tough flight."

"They didn't sedate her?" He demands, all but pushing JJ out of the way to get into that damn room. "Have you spoken to any of these doctors?"

"They did, but they're trying to wean her off the heavy painkillers. Some of them have been making her really sick, which means she won't eat, and if she won't eat, she won't -"

"She's in pain," he seethes, already turning on his heel to find the closest doctor.

...

Aaron stays by her side more than he probably should, and he's gotten used to the sympathetic looks the nurses give when they come in for vitals checks only to see him dozing in the chair beside her. Most of the time she sleeps too, because of the sheer effort it takes to breathe through the pain and of course, coming to terms with the heavy reality that there's no way out of this.

But there are times she's awake, alert and mostly coherent.

"You don't have to stay," is what she always says as he holds her hand. "You have other things you need to do. You need to get home to Jack."

"I'm not leaving you." He's firm but gentle, giving her no room to argue.

She doesn't fight him; she doesn't have the strength. She knows what's coming just as much as he does. They don't talk about Doyle, but they talk about the mundane things - the weather, the crappy movies on the TV. She asks about Jack, and the team, and Aaron doesn't know how to tell her just how horribly they're all grieving. It would completely shatter her.

Even his son, in his six-year-old way, expresses his own pain - his artwork is full of red and black swirls that he can't decipher, his nightmares are frequent. He cries being dropped at school; he cries when Aaron finally turns the TV off way too late each night, having lost track of any semblance of time; he cries when he sees dark-haired women at the grocery store.

So he lies and tells Emily they're doing alright, even if it's the farthest thing from the truth.

They make her get up and walk before she's ready, under the guise of expediting the healing process. He witnesses every nauseating second even though he wishes he hadn't. There are some things that you never forget, and the image of her face contorted in pain as she betrays her body at the expense of bureaucratic bullshit is one that will stay with him for a long time. He hadn't meant to lose his temper that day but it just happened, and as he'd carried her back to the bed himself, her body limp against him. He held her until she had fallen asleep and was there next to her when her eyes fluttered open hours later.

…

When she's strong enough to walk around the floor without a walker for support, they start coordinating her discharge and subsequent arrangements, and he knows the end is coming. The papers are signed; the plans are finalized. The bureau isn't happy about any of this (he knew they wouldn't be from the moment he'd called them) but it's a done deal and within a week, she'll be gone, as if she actually had died in that warehouse in Boston.

He's been awake for hours when JJ calls him a few days later, even though it's only 5:30 in the morning. In just a few more hours, he'll have to put on his bravest face for the sake of his team, and act as if all of this is normal, just another part of the fucking grieving process.

"It's time," she says, in a low, worn voice that tells him it's been a sleepless night for her, too. "I'll send you the location when I get final confirmation."

There's a mug of day old, cold coffee in his hands that tastes as he imagines tar might, but he drinks it anyway. He knows she's trying to give him a sense of comfort when she mentions the private plane the bureau has arranged for transport, and the fact that she'll accompany Emily on the flight personally.

It doesn't help, but he doesn't say it.

He wants to ask what comes after all of this, once they land in whatever location they're shipping her off to, but he doesn't have to, because he's done this job long enough. No one needs to know what happens next. It's life but it's not living; any semblance of normalcy ceases to exist when you don't technically exist. Emily isn't Emily anymore. She'll be many different people but no one at the same time, a series of aliases that sound believable and real, but none of them are her. None of them ever will be.

"She wants to see you," is what JJ says when he doesn't respond to her initial statement.

"I know."

"It can't be long, Aaron. Fifteen minutes at most. We can't … there can't be any -"

"I know, JJ. I know how this works. I'll be there. Send me the location when you get it."

Seconds after the call ends, he vomits the old coffee right back up.

...

Aaron can hardly look himself in the mirror that day at work, knowing he will get a chance to say goodbye when none of the others will be able to do the same. He stays in his office most of the afternoon, burying himself in the mounting piles of paperwork that have grown in his multiple absences. He loses track of time, his mind wandering all the places it shouldn't, his heart eroding piece by piece as he backtracks through the last six months; the last time he can remember being happy in years.

They were only getting started, and now he won't get another chance. They finally had given in to what's been building between them for years, the night JJ had left that previous fall. Emily found him much later that night, drinking alone, pondering why he still does this job, and of course, it spiraled from there.

Emily snapped him out if his self-induced pity party. They went drink for drink, and as they got up to leave, his hand slid down to the small of her back as he ushered her out of the smoky, hazy bar just a few inches too close for it to be platonic. She'd bit her lower lip and her eyes said all the things she shouldn't, and somehow, they both knew exactly what was about to happen.

At first it was solely fucking (or that's what they told themselves but it was so much more than that, even from the start), but nights became mornings and mornings became coffee with breakfasts and soon enough, he asked her out on a real date. One with reservations and a table for two and a shared bottle of wine between them, their fingers linked together as they walked around DC in the Indian summer evening.

There had been dinners out and drinks at his place, coupled with the easy intimacy that comes with years of knowing someone, and then peeling their layers back one by one, completely unguarded. Aaron was only just starting to break through all of her many compartments, only for her to be taken away from him so cruelly.

Of everything he grieves about Emily's death, he grieves this the most.

...

"This is really against protocol," the armed guard manning the hangar door mutters with a sigh as he unlocks it anyway. It's clear he's been expecting Aaron's arrival at the airstrip, judging by how many times he's checked his watch since he saw him get out of his car. The man is burly and gruff but his eyes are kind, sympathetic even, and Aaron can't help but feel a small pang of relief that he (along with a few others) will also be on that plane with her. "She's inside. Be quick."

He nods; his palms start to sweat despite the chilly night air; out of nowhere it starts to rain, a misty drizzle that soon will become a torrential downpour, and when the door opens all the way, Aaron steels himself, because he doesn't know what he's going to find when he slips inside.

Emily is sitting on a small chair at a smaller, dirty table covered in dust, wearing a dark jacket and some kind of scarf around her neck. She's holding herself stiffly; the pain is still a pretty consistent companion at this point, and she'd refused anything stronger than ibuprofen. "You came," is what she says, but what she means is I'm sorry. Her lower lip trembles as she attempts a smile that doesn't quite make it all the way across her mouth. There's a bag beside her feet, barely big enough to fit anything, but it doesn't matter, because what could she possibly need from her old life when she's being forced to erase it?

Someone will have to go through her apartment, Aaron thinks, swallowing the lump in his throat at the prospect. "Did you think I wouldn't?"

"I … I wouldn't have blamed you if you hadn't. I can understand why you're angry."

"I'm not angry at you," he tells her, his composure starting to unravel entirely too soon. "I've never been angry with you, Emily. None of this is your fault. You were doing -"

"But it is my fault, Aaron. He's still -"

"I'll never stop looking for him, Emily. I'm going to hunt him to the ends of the earth until he's dead." He's never been more sure of anything in his life. He needs her to know that too.

"Don't talk about him, Aaron. Please. Not now."

"How can you not -"

"Aaron." Her eyes are like glass now, the tears are about to spill. "We don't have much time." She stands with a slight grimace; the last six weeks haven't been kind to her in the slightest but she's defied even the most optimistic outcomes by healing as well as she has. "I don't want our last moments to be like this."

Our last moments.

"I got these for Jack … a while ago I never had a chance to ..." She reaches into the bag at her feet and pulls something out - a pack of scented markers in a bunch of neon colors that remind him immediately of his son. Her hand is trembling when she passes them over. "Do you think he'll like them? He was … upset he didn't have any neon ones the last time I … we …" she trails off, unable to finish her thought, pressing her hand over her mouth.

"He'll love them," Aaron chokes, and it's the truth. Jack will light up when he sees them, and Aaron wonders just how he's going to explain this to his son, who is already struggling to process the fact that Emily won't be coming around anymore.

"I won't … I won't get a chance to give them to him myself." Her lip starts to tremble; she's doing her best to keep her composure but her heart breaks at the thought of never seeing that little boy again, and she has to look away.

"You won't be gone forever." He doesn't know who he's convincing at this point. "You can't. I won't - I can't -" He sees Boston again in his mind, hears Morgan's shouts for an ambulance and the whirring of the sirens. He remembers his foot on the gas pedal, eyes glued on the ambulance in front of him, a shell-shocked Reid in the passenger seat, gripping the center console as they raced to the hospital. "I won't let it happen."

"You made me so happy, Aaron. The last six months with you are the happiest I've ever been." That is what does it, and it's almost as if he can hear her heart start to shatter in her chest as the tears begin, one by one but soon he can't count them all. "You need to know that."

"Look at me," he demands but it doesn't sound stern at all. His voice cracks as he fights tears of his own.

"Not like this," she sobs now, losing whatever last bit of self-control she maintained until this moment. "Not like this."

"Look at me." He gets it together enough to speak a full sentence, albeit three words, his voice stern now, and he sounds like the Aaron Hotchner who she's always known. "Emily, please."

She does, her memories of him and them right at the surface of her glassy stare, and even though he shouldn't, he brings his hands up to her face and kisses her the way he always has. It's the first time he has since before Boston and will most likely be one of the very last.

Emily kisses him back even though she's still crying, and Aaron isn't sure where her tears start and his end because both of their faces are wet. The kisses are dizzying, demanding, as if they can't get enough of the other, but they may never have this moment again. Her knees start to buckle and he's right there with a gentle arm around her back to keep her on her feet. Her cheeks are sticky with tears when she lays her head on his shoulder to take a ragged breath, he breathes her in. It's the same mix of whatever perfume and shampoo she has that makes her so uniquely Emily that it makes his chest ache.

"Hotch." The voice coming from the door is one he knows well. JJ's presence means this is truly it. They have minutes now, more like seconds to say their goodbyes. JJ is dressed similarly to Emily, in layers and a jacket and scarf, a bag at her side and an envelope tucked under her arm. She looks nothing like a federal agent, in fact, she looks like she's headed on some very posh European vacation. "Hotch, it's time."

"Another minute," he chokes, but Emily shakes her head, leaning into his hand on her cheek that frames her face, gently pushing him away.

"Promise me you'll be happy, Aaron. For Jack. For you. Promise me you're going to move on from this." She's attempting to file this away in all those perfect compartments in her mind that are starting to blur together now, but her lip continues to shake and now her hands are too. "Please."

Never. "I love you," is what he says, and it's what he means, and he should have said it months ago because maybe they wouldn't be in this special version of hell in this dingy, cold hangar in the middle of the night while Ian fucking Doyle runs free, waiting for one of them to make a mistake, so he can lay his revenge once again. Maybe she would have opened up to him about the storm that was brewing for so many weeks while he turned a blind eye. Maybe then none of this would ever be their reality.

"I love you," is what she says, and it's what she means, and she should have said it months ago, because maybe then his face wouldn't be laced with the pain that only comes with a front row seat to a shattering heart. That's the image she'll remember for the rest of her days. Of course she'll remember the others and play them out in her mind in the hours of solitude she undoubtedly faces - the mornings she spent in his arms, the nights spent in his bed. The weekends with Jack at the museum and the zoo, the evenings with a bottle of wine and a movie neither of them will be able to remember anything about once the credits roll, but those will forever be tarnished. What she'll see when she thinks of him is how broken he looks right now, and for a brief moment, she wishes she would have bled out on the ground in Boston.

He's cupping her chin in his hands, kissing her pale cheeks and running his fingers through her hair, whatever he can to sear the feeling of her skin into his memory, the contours and curves of her face. He knows them by heart now but that's not enough, and with the gentle hand on her back he pulls her even closer, sealing his lips over hers one last time.

Emily pulls away first, dragging her shaking hands down the material of his jacket, her fingers twisting in it as the tears are streaming down her cheeks. "You," she says through tears, with more than a hint of finality, "are the very best thing I've ever known."

"I mean it," he says as she starts to back away, slowly at first. "I'll find him. We'll find him. We'll find him and I'll bring you home and - "

She shakes her head sadly as she leans in to kiss his cheek one last time. He won't. They won't. They never will. "It was never supposed to be this way, Aaron."

"Emily." He's still crying too, freely, not even bothering to hide it. He moves towards her as she moves back, putting the first few inches of distance between them that soon will become unquantifiable. She is too, the same deep sobs from before that make breathing nearly impossible. It must be excruciating to cry like that with her body still healing, he thinks, as she backs up even more, away from him. "I love you."

"I love you, Aaron." It comes out practically unintelligible with how hard she's sobbing, and the only reason she doesn't crumple to the ground is because JJ and the guard from the door are there to keep her standing as they usher her out and into the night.

Then the door of the hangar shuts, leaving him alone in a deafening silence that's only going to get louder with time.

...

Time doesn't heal anything. It's just a fucking myth.