By the end of second day, Rachel's room had been filled with flowers and get well cards. Rossi counted half a dozen cards from various students and student groups from her high school, a bouquet of flowers from her employer and a second one from her friend Natasha.

But her friend Michael had been on her doorstep that first night, nervous and fidgeting and obviously filled with guilt.

Rossi observed silently as the teenaged boy hovered in Rachel's doorway while the girl herself slept.

"Shit."

"She'll be okay," Rossi assured him quietly from his seat next to Rachel's bed. "Her surgery went well, nothing vital was punctured, and the recovery shouldn't be too bad."

"I left her," Michael confessed, self-hatred evident in his voice, the slump of his shoulders, and the clenched fists.

Unlike the rest of the team, Rossi had met Rachel when she had already done a great deal of healing after her mother's murder and her father's abandonment. He hadn't seen really when she had been at her most vulnerable. He also had never heard Gideon's opinion of her best friend until after hearing Rachel's own praise of Michael, so he already had a favorable opinion of the boy before hearing about his delinquency.

Not that Rossi ever gave Gideon's opinion the benefit of the doubt.

"You couldn't have known what would happen," Rossi told the boy. And for all Michael had been through—Hotch had hinted enough that Rossi guessed about Pat Garrett's treatment—and for all that he was living on his own and working a nearly full time job, he was still just a boy in Rossi's eyes.

"But—"

"Don't do this to yourself, son," Rossi interrupted. "Do you really want to know what would have happened if you had stuck around? Best case scenario, Foyet would have had another toy to play with and then three bodies to drag to the hospital. Only, he might not have put as much effort into keeping you alive."

"I think I can guess the worst case," Michael growled. "Rachel told me about Foyet, how he likes to target couples."

Rossi grimaced at the thought. If Foyet had found Rachel together with her young man, especially given what the whole team knew they had been doing thanks to Rachel's medical exams, Rossi was absolutely certain that Foyet would not have been able to resist setting the stage. Hotch would have opened the door on two mutilated teenaged bodies.

Eventually, Michael got over his grief and shock enough that he took Rossi's seat next to Rachel's bed. Ten minutes later, he was slumped on the bed, asleep himself, holding onto Rachel's hand.

Rossi left the room to give the young lovers some privacy. At least until visiting hours were nearly over. The agent shook Michael awake and sent him home and then settled himself in for a night's vigil.

FBI badges went a long way to ensure that any one of Hotch's team could remain outside his and Rachel's hospital rooms to stand guard. None of them really believed that Foyet would return, or could even return, but none of them wanted to take that chance.

Sometime around midnight, Rossi retrieved a cup of coffee from the nurse's station just down the hall rather than go all the way to the cafeteria. Rossi had made sure to charm the head RN on the previous shift who had passed word on to her replacement. Rossi had also already written down a reminder to donate a couple bottles of his favorite Chianti to the hospital's staff.

He was returning to Rachel's room (it had a more comfortable chair than Hotch's and he could still monitor them both) when he noticed a tall figure standing just inside the doorway of Rachel's room.

Rossi carefully placed his coffee cup down on the counter of the nurse's station and thumbed the clasp off of his holster.

"There's no need for that," the figure said without turning around.

Rossi approached cautiously and then recognized the profile.

"I wouldn't be so sure," he remarked. "Then again, I think the others would be upset if I beat them to the punch by shooting you first."

Jason Gideon turned his head slightly to take in Rossi's stance but then dismissed him to resume staring at his daughter.

To say that the two men hadn't gotten along back in the good old days was not only a vast understatement to the feelings, but also the complexity of those feelings. Sure, Rossi had trusted Gideon to have his back on the job, but any time their lives weren't on the line, the battle lines were drawn.

When Rossi had first learned about the most recent opening on the BAU, and whose departure had made said opening, he hadn't thought too much about why until he had already called Strauss to set up his meeting with her. It was only after she had confirmed his re-hiring that he had researched the events that had led to Gideon's sudden exit.

He had felt pity for his former colleague when he read about Sarah. No one deserved that. But nothing could have prepared him when he had met Rachel in Hotch's office his first day back. That Gideon had reached a breaking point, Rossi could understand and sympathize. That he had needed to quit for his own sanity Rossi could also understand. Leaving Rachel behind though? That was unforgiveable in Rossi's book. And that had been before he had gotten to know Rachel.

"How did this happen?" Gideon finally demanded quietly.

"The Boston Reaper happened," Rossi reported.

"That was Hotch's first command," Gideon mused to himself. "So now he's marked Hotch as his adversary, made a personal attack on him and the people he loves."

"That's one way of putting it."

As far as Rossi could tell, Gideon still hadn't walked any further into Rachel's room.

"What are you doing here, Jason?"

Gideon could still level a glare of scorn strong enough to blister the skin off most peoples' faces. Luckily, Rossi was not most people.

"I'm here for my daughter," the man snapped, biting off every single word. Despite the force behind his words, though, he still hadn't raised the volume beyond a whisper.

"The daughter you left behind," Rossi accused, just as quietly and forcefully.

"Don't you dare judge me, David," Gideon swore. "You're not a father."

Over a year ago, when Rossi had first really talked with Rachel for the first time, he had predicted that if he and Gideon were to ever start this conversation, that Gideon would ultimately use that argument against him. Too bad Rossi felt zero satisfaction for being proven right.

"No, but I'm sure I would have been a damn sight better than you," Rossi shot back. "I never would have abandoned my child the way you did. Not in a million fucking years."

"Really? I find that hard to believe given how many women you've walked out on."

And there was the old, reliable argument that Gideon never failed to bring out. Back in the day, it had never mattered what argument the two were having, bringing up Rossi's divorces (granted, only two at the time they had known each other) and other numerous failed romances had been Gideon's default argument.

"Grown women who agreed that the marriages were over," Rossi corrected. "Not a girl who had just watched her mother butchered in front of her."

In a way, it was really just the same argument the two men had had for almost twenty years. Two years ago, Rossi would have enjoyed it for old times' sake. Yesterday, he still would have enjoyed it for the opportunity to level all the new accusations against Gideon on behalf of the team that Rossi now called family. Especially the points that none of the team members would probably say.

That Gideon had also once, supposedly, called these people family made it worse.

And maybe the men might have come to raised voices or even physical blows except that Rachel fortuitously shifted in her sleep and then continued to do so uncomfortably, obviously in the throes of a nightmare to which she was entirely entitled.

Where Gideon hesitated, Rossi stepped forward and ran his hand over the unbruised half of Rachel's face, rubbing her cheek and smoothing the hair away from her forehead. Thankfully, his touch succeeded in lulling the girl into dreamless sleep once again. Rossi looked back and saw a sight he never thought was possible.

Gideon stood stock-still, transfixed on his daughter's form asleep in her hospital bed, soothed out of her nightmare by the man who had once been his rival, his opposite and foil, in so many ways.

"She's moved on," Rossi said softly and as gently as he could. "If you came back into her life at this exact moment, I'm positive that it won't go over the way you want it to. You want to swan in here, rescue her and sweep her away from all this ugliness. It might have worked two years ago, but not now. She's learned to stand, Jason, on her own two feet. She's learned to be strong and that even as she still depends on us for support, we depend on her equally."

Not even twenty four hours earlier, Rossi and the rest of the team had all listened in as Garcia put Rachel on speaker so that the girl could share her news of a successful music scholarship audition. Nearly an hour that girl talked about it, talked more about the music program she would be studying, and the campus life. Minute by minute, the team was reminded that normal, good things still existed, that triumph was still possible, even flying home from the horrors of that damned pig farm.

Finally, Gideon nodded his acceptance, his shoulders slouching ever so slightly in defeat. Before he turned away to walk out of the room, he did fix his gaze squarely on Rossi, silently passing on a warning: Protect my daughter, keep her from harm.

Rossi nodded his own understanding and watched as the man walked out of his daughter's life once again. Granted, it was what Rossi had told him to do, but he was actually surprised that Gideon had done so. Yet another aspect of the man that Rossi would never understand.

He turned his attention back to Rachel and allowed himself to imagine what might have happened if Gideon has stayed. Likely, the man would have demanded that Rachel returned with him to whatever corner of the country he now called home. Rachel would have argued and stuck to her guns—just like she had with Hotch earlier about witness protection—and the two would have parted with words of anger.

Gideon also likely would have either berated Hotch in his hospital bed for allowing Foyet anywhere near his daughter, eviscerated his profiling of the Boston Reaper, implied that Gideon would have figured out Foyet's true nature before anyone else, and might have ended it all with that singular, dismissive gesture that had annoyed Rossi so much.

No, it was better that Gideon slipped off into the night with only Rossi to know he had even been here in the first place.

So Rossi once again positioned the chair in Rachel's room. But damn it all, now he had to go get a fresh cup of coffee.


Notes:

Seriously, this is my absolute favorite chapter of Common Tones so far, I don't think I need to tell you why. As soon as I knew that Rachel would be one of Foyet's victims, I also knew that I wanted to write a scene with Gideon standing in her hospital room and getting found by Rossi. And then I had a blast living vicariously through Rossi.

So, what did you guys think?

Cantoris