Disclaimer: Ah, you know. Why don't you look at previous chapters for that?

This chapter is much longer than the others, and I'm afraid also less good. I'm having these weird feelings while writing now, and I don't know if they are a good or a bad influence.

I promise you will find out more soon, but first I have to make the situation clear. Also, I want to make Emily's feelings clearer. I hope I did.

Anyway, enjoy!

Everyone looked up as Emily entered the lobby.

"Where is she?" Morgan asked, looking behind her. Emily carefully closed the door before she said: "She was really tired, she's gone to bed now."

Hotch frowned, but decided to let it go for now. He had more pressing matters.

Emily sat down in a comfortably chair: she would go up soon, right after she'd heard whatever Hotch was going to say. He made her curious, because even for his standards, he looked quite preoccupied.

He cleared his throat and everybody looked at him expectantly.

"Since Gideon left, I have been searching for someone to take his place in the team. We do need another SSA. Before yesterday I was unsuccessful, but then the Chief Director called. He is an agent in early retirement, but he has agreed on going back for a while."

"What's his name?" Reid asked, always curious to know if it was someone he'd heard of.

"SSA David Rossi," Hotch answered, and Reid shot up. "David Rossi? The man who has solved the Scarsdale Skinner case based on psycho-linguistics? That David Rossi? The man has such an interesting perspective on the subject of how the handwriting of a person can affect his or her general beha-"

"Reid, relax, he isn't here yet," said Morgan. Emily had to stifle a laugh: it was entertaining to see Reid's enthusiastic behaviour in the prospect of meeting someone interesting.

"He will meet us when we get back to Quantico. The plane leaves at 11 in the morning, so make sure you are there. Tonight is free."

Morgan clapped Reid on the back. "What do you say you and I go clubbing for a bit?" He laughed at Reid's expression. "Don't worry, kiddo, I'm only kidding." He looked around. "Is anyone joining me? Prentiss? Hotch?"

Emily shook her head. "I'm going to stay with JJ tonight, sorry."

But Hotch looked up and said: "Sure Morgan, why not."

Emily frowned at this unexpected side of Hotch, but decided to let it slip. The man probably needed to unwind, too.

After saying goodbye to the others, she went up to her room to find JJ fast asleep. She looked at her for a moment – JJ seemed so peaceful right now, without any worries. But Emily knew it was only a façade: JJ was probably not having such peaceful dreams.

She unwrapped her chocolate bar and took a bite: ah, how she had missed that bitter-sweet taste!

Eating her chocolate, she sat down in a comfortable chair and started thinking about JJ. She thought that was a more pressing matter than the news she had just received - she would worry about Rossi when that time came. Right now, JJ was her priority.

Something was definitely wrong, but Emily couldn't figure out what – it was more than the case.

It may have reminded her of something, something that happened which was similar to the hostage situation. Maybe JJ had been kidnapped before? But that didn't make sense, because then JJ would have reacted much more panicked, despite her FBI training. Besides, it would have been in her file, and it wasn't.

It was a possibility that it had reminded her of Tobias Hankel – she knew that he still spooked around in JJ's head, as well as Reid's. And while Reid had taken drugs as an escape, JJ hadn't escaped at all, not in a way that Emily knew of anyway. It had looked like JJ had just tried to forget it as soon as possible, and she appeared to have been quite lucky with that. But Emily knew that unfinished business always came back to plague: she had experienced that for herself more than once. Maybe this had been the time for JJ, although Emily didn't think this was the case. She couldn't explain why she thought so, but she did, and she was relying on it.

She thought it more likely that something happened in JJ's past. Combined with the comment she had made in the shower, it seemed likely that JJ was maybe beaten up, or…

But that couldn't have happened to JJ, could it? Nothing in her file said so, and JJ was innocent, unscarred, or at least less scarred than the rest of them. She couldn't have been abused, could she?

Emily hoped not, also because otherwise she had made a large mistake in her profiling. She told herself that she wasn't profiling, that she was helping a friend, but essentially it was the same: studying JJ's behaviour to see if anything strange was going on there.

She couldn't involve anyone else in her suspicions, though she would have liked to know if Garcia could find anything – this was JJ's business, and no matter how much Emily wanted to help her, she also knew that JJ wouldn't open up until she absolutely had to. She had noticed that quite early on: JJ only shared when she wanted to share, and what she wanted to share. She easily avoided any questions she didn't want to answer, and she had been doing that again today – but tomorrow, Emily decided, tomorrow she wasn't going to let her.

I'm a chocolate fan, hence the part where Emily takes her chocolate. How I long for a piece of that substance at the moment…