Author's Note:

*WARNING*

There's some disturbing stuff here in the opening. But, it's time to meet the UNSUB. So, if you're not in the mood to find out how the monster in this story was made, and what it did in its free time, be ready to go with the 'skimming' approach to some of the more descriptive segments.

Beyond that, a couple of FYI points:

I've been working on this story, and nothing but this story, for the last month. And it is finally, done! The complete telling of how things ended in Stars Hollow covers close to 70 pages, but I had to cut it a couple of times because it was just too much to try and proof all at once. So this is the first of three concluding chapters. They're all written, but they'll be going up staggered a few days apart because again, lot to proof.

And to this opening, I'm doing something I don't often do given that we ended the last chapter on a bit of a cliffy, we're jumping ahead beyond that moment. You'll find out what happened in the woods, but not 'live.' It just wasn't how my brain processed the scene. It kept moving ahead and I realized trying to go back and write a live scene that my brain didn't want to write, was counterproductive. When you try to go against instinct, it stalls the wrap up.

Lastly, I've decided to pull this story out and give it its own lettered Universe. Universe F. And I did that for reasons that will become quite apparent as we move to the end. But basically something will happen in an upcoming scene that falls outside fannon for later events in the main Girl'verse. And though I had not planned the scene initially, I thought it worked very well for this story, so I kept it. And then basically you'll how things shifted off from there. But remember now that we're definitively in our own world, and this tale is ending, anything can happen here in Stars Hollow!

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Author Prompt Set #24 (August 2012)

Author: Jenna Blum

Title Challenge: Those Who Save Us

They Who Fight With Monsters

Copper, urine, feces and . . . Hotch blanched and dropped his eyes down to the packed dirt at his feet . . . barbecue.

Those were the smells assaulting him as he stood at the bottom of the rickety cellar stairs with the State Police floodlights blinding his eyes.

He was in the basement of the house at 107 Pearberry Lane. A house that had turned out to be as evil as any Hotch had ever walked into. And though this structure was currently filled with members of law enforcement covering local, state and federal jurisdictions, up until that morning, 107 Pearberry had just been home to a family of four.

The St. Clairs.

That morning, the St. Clairs of 107 Pearberry had consisted of a mother and father in their mid-40s, a teenager daughter, and a young son. With a working dad and a stay-at-home mom, on a census perhaps, they would have been listed as a fairly typical family of four.

But this family had been anything but typical.

The daughter, Danielle . . . Dani . . . was a fifteen year old sociopath. It was Dani that had brought him and Emily to Stars Hollow. It was Dani who had set the fires around town. Dani who had created the pentagrams that they'd traced on the maps, and Dani who had slaughtered her neighbors' pets.

And then today . . . Hotch's jaw clenched . . . it was Dani who had tortured and killed her parents in the family basement where he now stood.

And though this girl had help in her ascension to becoming probably the youngest female UNSUB in their books . . . help in the form of her boyfriend, Darren, who had tried to ram him and Emily into a tree some hours earlier . . . Hotch saw Dani as the true mastermind behind this sadistic, and horrifically violent rampage that had terrorized this small community.

But of course, given what they had learned tonight, Dani's crimes . . . and her true pathology . . . were going to be topics of study for some time. There was no doubt that she was a monster . . . but why. What had made her this way?

And could anyone, have done anything, to stop it?

He didn't know.

The definition of evil, and whether nature or nurture was the driving force behind it, was a base question of not only their work, but of life itself. It had been the foundation for the countless religions. And though Hotch himself remained on the fence as to which was a more powerful influence . . . his own back story proved that you could beat all the odds working against you . . . he did plan on having a few visits down the road with Dani St. Clair.

She was a special case.

Because unlike him, with his alcoholic father and his psychopathic stepfather, Dani had not beat the odds working against her. She had not chosen a path out of the darkness she'd been born into. She'd chosen to go further in. Her crimes were even perpetrated from the same house, at the same time, as her parents.

The rotten apple never even fell off the tree.

Probably the one clear difference between the apples on that tree, were sheer multitude of acts. The elder St. Clairs were . . . by their daughter's sharing of their family history, and the insurmountable physical evidence found so far . . . prolific offenders. And as evidenced by the blood stained homemade dungeon that Hotch found himself standing in . . . again, the family basement . . . Ellen and Bill St. Clair had been killing people for a long time. At least a decade.

Perhaps two.

Perhaps their crimes went back even further than that. Christ only knew the lives that they'd lived before they'd found one another back in their early 20s. Whatever had happened before that . . . and Hotch would have somebody dig into it . . . it was clear that the body count resulting from this couple's 'joint' endeavors, would reach double digits.

But hopefully no higher.

"These people were indiscriminate purveyors of torture, sexual sadism and death," that was Hotch's post-mortem assessment of their crimes.

Emily had agreed.

At the time that they'd that discussion, they'd been standing in the master bedroom, leaning over the dresser, while Emily slowly turned the pages of the St. Clairs' trophy albums. Their stomachs had been churning as they looked at the dozens, and dozens, of glossy photographs.

Each photograph portraying a moment of agony. A human being that was being tortured, and violated, in some of the most horrific ways imaginable. And some ways that weren't even imaginable.

Even for people like them.

'And they were yet another pair that had stayed below the radar,' Hotch thought with a weary disgust. Before today, they had no idea that there was an active serial killer . . . let alone two . . . working in this part of Connecticut. And every time they discovered a new killing ground . . . one that their fancy statistical algorithms hadn't picked up . . . he wondered, truly, if their work even mattered.

It was a question that kept coming back to him.

At this point they might as well screw the psych degrees and IQ tests, and just look for people to join the BAU that had a history in sanitation. Because that's all they were, he thought bitterly, just a fucking clean-up crew. Hell, they might as well start passing out HEFTY bags and SHOVELS along with their badges and guns!

Then they might actually do something USEFUL when they showed up two fucking DECADES too late!

CHRIST!

Realizing that people were starting to stare at him . . . his breathing was ragged and his hands had curled into fists . . . Hotch turned abruptly and walked over to one of the empty corners of the cellar.

The forensics team had already moved through there.

And when the others went back to their work . . . went back to ignoring him . . . for the first time in hours, Hotch had a moment of relative, blessed, privacy.

He closed his eyes.

He was trying to push down the anger and grief rising up . . . trying to will his composure back into a state of being. It was difficult. But, slowly, he shifted back to his center.

Or at least he moved away from the edge.

That was the best he could do.

All right . . . he sucked in a ragged breath . . . maybe they weren't entirely useless. This trip to Connecticut had, through a chain reaction of random events . . . some of which they could take credit for, some of which they would never want to . . . saved countless future victims.

Of that he was sure.

Because those people would have been victims of not only Ellen or Bill . . . but also Dani and Darren. And the latter were just fledgling killers with a lifetime of torture games ahead of them. Before today they'd still mostly been practicing on small animals.

But today, today with the slaughter of Dani's parents, they'd moved on to their big game. And now that they had a taste for it, they would never go back.

None of them ever did.

And Hotch knew that those faceless 'might have beens,' that they had to be enough comfort to get him through this day. Because that's all they had.

That's all they were worth.

And that was the ugly truth of it. In many ways his team, they were always going to be a clean-up crew. There were just too many of them out there. For active offenders . . . with known and unknown killing grounds . . . his unit was outnumbered tenfold. Christ, he and Emily had flown up to investigate a few fires and a series of animal mutilations. It could have been, literally, anything. But they'd started a file, and kicked over a rock.

Four snakes had slithered out.

Two had been stomped to death, and two were going to be locked up. That was as much justice as they were going to get. They would never have a 'win.' It didn't work like that. This was a war. They fought battles, and skirmishes. Sometimes they lost horrifically . . . Gideon was a prime example of that . . . but even when they limped off the field on a day like this, it was never a win. Because again, it was a war. Nobody ever won a war.

If they were lucky, the best they could hope for was to survive it.

And both he and Emily were walking away from this one with four killers out of action, and minimal personal, physical injuries. So that was all they were going to get.

Well, that . . . Hotch's jaw clenched . . . and Andy. But Andy didn't count as a win either.

Andy was a tragedy.

He was the St. Clairs' five year old son. And as far as they knew so far . . . though intense counseling with the boy had not yet begun . . . the only member of this household that had never tortured or killed another living creature. He was an innocent.

As far as that term could apply in the world he had been born into.

And Hotch had his fingers crossed that this fact would stay true, that he could keep the blood off his own hands. That they hadn't been too late to save him from becoming like his sister.

A lost cause.

But in his bones, Hotch also knew that it would take a miracle for Andy's soul to be saved. He too shared that polluted gene pool. And he too had been physically and psychologically abused by his parents. Abused in ways that Hotch couldn't . . . and wouldn't . . . allow himself to truly dwell on, on this night. Because he just kept picturing Jack's face on Andy's body.

And every time he just wanted to fall to his knees and weep.

That had been his instinct when he'd first found Andy, naked and bleeding. He was in a cage hidden in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Dear God, he looks just like Jack.

The thought had come to him, and it had actually frozen him, for just a moment. But then he took a breath, and he got his shit together.

Because that's what they did.

And once he got his shit together, his second thought was to thank God that he had been the one to search the bedroom and not Emily. Because after every other brutality that she'd been immersed in on that day . . . and she had been taking the BRUNT of the trauma on this one . . . he feared that moment would have broken her.

It had nearly broken him.

But once he'd knelt down, he'd shoved as much of that pain back down that he could manage. It was a ruthless process. But everything about his job was ruthless.

It ate you out from the inside.

So with a deep breath, and a silent prayer, he'd begun speaking softly to the little boy that looked so much like his son.

At that point the deputy he'd partnered with for the bedroom search, had called up one of the crime scene technicians to meet them in the bedroom. And with her taking photos to document the scene . . . or more specifically documenting that poor child's burns and sores, his cuts and his sobbing . . . Hotch had begun to slowly coax Andy out of the cage.

It hadn't been easy.

He had to keep his badge out, and keep promising him . . . swearing to him . . . that he was safe. That the house was filled with police officers. And that nobody could hurt him anymore.

That nobody would ever hurt him ever again.

It had taken almost fifteen minutes of promising things that he shouldn't promise . . . safety was an illusion, and the world was a terrible place . . . but then finally, he got through to that boy. He didn't know if he truly believed the promises that he'd made, or if Andy finally realized that the world beyond his room, couldn't possibly be any worse than the world that he already lived in.

Well, probably not anyway.

Either way, he suddenly sniffled, and wiped his nose. And then he slowly began to unfurl himself from his little ball. And a moment after that, he'd begun to crawl out from within his little prison.

And when he'd stood in front of Hotch, shaking and crying, Hotch had again, wanted to weep himself. But he'd pushed down the lump in his throat, and blinked the moisture from his eyes. He didn't lose his composure at crimes scenes.

Or at least he hadn't yet.

So he'd given that little boy a soft . . . pained . . . smile as he slowly put his hand out. And after a second of staring intently . . . like he was trying to read his soul . . . Andy too had reached out.

His arm was shaking. And when that dirty little hand had been placed into his palm, Hotch knew that he'd received a precious gift.

An abused child's trust.

He'd curled his fist shut. And then he gently squeezed the little fingers, while he told Andy that he was a good boy, and that they were going to get him out of there.

Finally, promises that weren't lies.

And Hotch held on . . . though he kept a little physical distance, he didn't want to frighten him . . . while he kept whispering over and over that everything would be okay.

He was back to his lies again.

And while he was bonding with a little boy who had probably never known a kind word, or a kind act, the deputy had been searching frantically around for something clean to cover him in.

There were no blankets in the room without visible stains.

But then finally the crime scene photographer had exclaimed, "oh" and run out of the room. Two minute later she ran back in, slightly breathless, carrying a Scooby Doo blanket.

Her eyes had been watering when she handed it to Hotch. She said it belonged to her son. She'd been called in from home, and it had been in the back seat of her car.

She'd almost forgotten she had it.

Then a tear slid down her cheek, and she quickly wiped it away. And Hotch had felt a pang of sympathy . . . and envy . . . because he'd known something then.

This world was new to her.

If only he could have said the same. But he couldn't. And as the one who lived that life every day, he'd given her a little smile, and a nod of thanks.

Then he'd quickly turned away.

Because he'd realized that tonight she was going to go home and hug her child, while he was going to go back to a hotel room and look at a picture of his.

His sympathy had morphed back to envy . . . and hate.

But he pushed that aside too when he turned to gently wrap the soft flannel around the little boy in front of him. Then Hotch gave him another smile, again blinking away the moisture that was burning his eyes. Then he finally reached out, scooping up that child that looked so much like his son.

He'd cradled him just as he had when Jack was a baby. It was the only way to be sure that he wouldn't hurt him any worse than he already was. And so with the deputy and the technician trailing behind, he'd carefully carried Andy out of the bedroom, through the upstairs hall, and down the narrow staircase.

He banged his elbow twice, but Andy didn't get jostled once.

When he'd gotten to the bottom of the stairs, he spared Emily a look. She was standing by the fireplace, her eyes wide with horror. And he could see where her arms were crossed, that her fingers were digging into her flesh.

And then she looked away.

Looked back to the cuffed Dani sitting across the living room.

There had been no expression on the younger woman's face . . . though she had been the one that told them to look in the back bedroom under the quilt.

"Mom and dad keep my brother in a cage up there . . . his name is Andy."

Her tone had been flat when she'd shared that news . . . almost like she was telling them about the family dog. But Hotch supposed that he had to at least give her a point for mentioning her brother at all. The house was so big, and filled with so much garbage . . . these people lived in their own filth . . . that they might not have gotten through a full search of that room for hours.

But that was because at time everything was still actively 'happening.'

Darren had been taken away in the first ambulance, but their backup was still arriving. There were only maybe seven or eight other members of law enforcement on site. A couple of FBI agents, a couple of deputies, the sheriff, and two lab techs.

That was nothing compared to what they had now.

Also though, in addition to waiting for more investigators, they were still waiting for another ambulance to arrive. This wasn't a big city, or even a bustling little town. This was the sticks.

Ambulatory response time was . . . to put it mildly . . . delayed.

So Hotch had gone out to the porch. The sun had just gone down then, and the State Police hadn't arrived yet with all of the sodium lamps. But the lights from the cruisers were keeping the yard awash in a swirl of blue and red.

If you didn't know why they were there, it was almost pretty.

Almost.

So Hotch had gone over to the buckling steps, and sat down with Andy in his lap. And they sat there in the dark and they watched the lights flash and the people rush around. After a few minutes one of the deputies came over with a chocolate bar that he'd found in his glove compartment. Hotch unwrapped it, and Andy scarfed it down like he hadn't eaten in a week.

He probably hadn't.

But then the second ambulance had shown up.

And Hotch's heart had ached when he had to hand that boy off to the paramedics. As they carried him away, Andy was sobbing and twisting, reaching back for his hand.

He wanted him to stay with him.

And Hotch had to let him go . . . but he'd sent a piece of himself off with him.

But after seeing what had been done to that child, if the parents hadn't already been dead, Hotch might have killed them himself.

Truly.

It had been about three and a half hours since he'd sent Andy to the hospital with one of the local deputies. But his rage on that point had not faded yet. But of course things just kept happening to feed it.

First there was the ambush out in the driveway, and then there was the second ambush out in the woods.

The second time it was Danielle with a butcher knife.

Emily had subdued her, and within a few minutes the first deputy had arrived with a pair of cuffs to haul her away. That was the one break that they'd gotten that day, a relatively speedy response on getting help.

And again, they were in the sticks, so 'relatively speedy' was the best that they could hope for.

By all accounts . . . and that was including conversations with Dave and Morgan where Hotch told them to stay back in Virginia . . . the team had been able to reach the sheriff, the state police, and the local FBI field office within three minutes of Emily's text. Their first backup had arrived about eight minutes after that.

And then the backup kept coming for two and half more hours.

But they still didn't have enough officers and agents onsite. Not to cover everything that they were looking for. And what they were looking for . . . what they'd already literally unearthed . . . were graves.

Lots of them.

At this point they had no reason to believe that Danielle had killed anyone else at the house, so the victims . . . of which they knew there would be dozens . . . would all belong to the senior St. Clairs. But the property was large . . . and they had the woods to consider too . . . so that excavation was going to go on for two or three days at least. But that was mostly now a local matter.

This was their case to close.

And with Darren off in surgery at the county hospital, and Danielle just, finally . . . after a three plus hour confession . . . having been taken out of the house in cuffs, there was really nothing more for Hotch or Emily to do at the house that night.

But he still wasn't quite ready to go yet.

Hence his trip down to the basement.

Though part of Hotch wanted to leave, to just let it go . . . let the images begin to fade and meld with all of the other horrors in his mind . . . he'd been driven to come down and take one final look at this nightmarish underground world. There were so many hells on earth.

He sometimes wondered how many he would visit before he died.

But this one was a special hell. This was the one where Ellen and Bill had played medieval torture games with not only with their children, but also drifters and prostitutes from any major city within driving distance.

Those were the victims in their trophy albums.

According to Danielle . . . and they had no reason to disbelieve her version of events . . . those cities they'd hunted in included New York, Bridgeport, Providence, and Boston. Jurisdictional issues would have been a nightmare if not for the St. Clairs being dead.

But today all of their power had been stripped away. Danielle had been the dungeon master, and Darren her assistant. And the games that these inhumane people had played . . . both the parents and the children . . . had been quite literally, medieval.

Danielle was still soaked in blood when she'd come running and screaming into the woods.

Hotch's lips pursed as he looked over to the south wall where the forensics team was now working. That was where Bill had constructed a homemade rack and a full size Iron Maiden. Craftsmanship clearly had been important to him.

No detail had been spared.

There was also a Judas Cradle in the north corner, and a Breast Ripper on the floor next to that. Both devices Hotch had only previously seen . . . or even heard of being used . . . in books.

From the sixteenth century.

But Ellen and Bill had a decidedly 'old school' bent. And the Spanish Inquisition had apparently been their greatest influence. All four devices were covered in blood and all manner of other bodily fluids.

They'd had a lot of 'fun' down here.

Those weren't the only torture devices that the St. Clairs had played with though. But the other instruments were less lethal . . . and for the most part . . . somewhat less painful. Of course when you were being tortured, pain was relative to what you were suffering at that moment.

And suffering was clearly the purpose of all the games.

Because those other devices . . . the 'less painful' ones . . . had included a thumbscrew vice, a half dozen whips hanging from the work table, and two sets of chains and shackles built into one of the concrete walls. Danielle said that the chains were for "when dad brought home prostitutes from the city." The prostitutes were apparently for her mom to play with.

The women did seem to run the show in this family.

So far the dogs had found two graves out in the back part of the property, going into the woods. The investigation was still in early hours yet, so only one of the graves had been fully excavated. And the body that they had found inside was old, with no obvious cause of death.

Danielle said that she didn't know who was buried out there, that the graves had been there as long as she could remember. So they were going on the assumption that it might have been a parent or an elderly neighbor. Somebody who could have died of an accident or natural causes. If so, there could have been a financial gain for the St. Clairs in keeping the death quiet.

It happened all the time.

So in the morning the accountants would begin going through the boxes of papers they were pulling out of the house. Social security or disability fraud would be the focus of their portion of the investigation. Their work would take weeks, and it would be tedious and exhausting.

Still though, Hotch was somewhat envious of them.

To live in a world without violence or blood . . . he shook his head . . . what was that like? He honestly had no idea.

Not anymore.

So now those paper crimes only interested him in as much as they told him about the types of perpetrators who would commit them. His primary concern . . . as far as they were allowed to stay involved in the case . . . was finding the rest of the bodies. He suspected that most of the victims would be found in the basement.

After all there was a reason that these people had reinforced concrete walls, but had kept a dirt floor.

So members of an FBI forensics team . . . specialists on loan from New York . . . had just arrived to set up their sonar equipment.

They were trying to figure out where to dig.

Hotch was had mostly just come down to see that the process . . . which he knew would also be long and tedious . . . had begun. After that he was leaving. Over his years with the BAU, he'd seen literally hundreds of mutilated bodies that had been ripped up out of the cold ground.

He didn't need to see these ones too.

He just wanted to make sure that they were found.

Emily had had enough of the basement earlier when they'd found the blood and fecal matter smeared on the Judas Cradle. From the look on her face, and the way her closed fist pressed into her stomach, he knew that she was thinking back to the Pear of Anguish.

So now she had another sexual torture device to add to her nightmare play list.

And she got that stack of horrors, in addition to the guilt over shooting Darren . . . she always felt guilty after a shooting, it was the Catholic in her . . . the pain of taking the child witness statements in the morning, and then the horror of bonding with Danielle in the evening. She'd gotten it coming and going over and again. And yet still she kept her composure and her professionalism.

She was truly . . . he bit his lip . . . remarkable. He honestly didn't know anyone else like her. And as privileged as he felt that he could call her a confidant, and in having her working as part of his team, it was still one of those days where Hotch's hatred of their job . . . and himself . . . far outweighed his pride in the good work that they did.

And those days where his mind was black, and his soul felt empty, were coming more and more often as of late. And that was something that he needed to deal with before all of his days were like that. The problem was, he just didn't know where to begin.

There was no road map out of hell.

And that's pretty much where he was right now. And when he told Emily that he was going back down in the cellar, and her eyes dropped as she said that she was going outside to wait out on the porch, he'd felt a stab of pain in his chest.

He'd wanted to give her a hug. And to tell her that he was sorry. And that he would make this day up to her.

But the words would have been lies.

He would never make this day up to her. There wasn't enough pixie dust in the world to make this day better. So he'd bitten down his useless apologies, and kept his hands to himself. Instead he sufficed with just giving her a tight nod, and a whispered "okay," as she'd slipped by him in the kitchen.

He'd wanted so badly to go after her . . . but he'd stayed right where he was. And he'd hated himself for that too. Because that was something else that he needed to work on.

And something else that was wrong with him, that he didn't know where to begin to fix.

But now that he was back down in the cellar, soaking up the atmosphere and the smells, he was again wishing that he'd gone outside to chase her down.

Though his reasons for wanting to leave now, were of a much more selfish variety. Because unfortunately he'd timed his last viewing of the night just right.

Or really . . . he rubbed his hand over his mask covered mouth . . . just wrong.

A moment ago the Medical Examiner's team had begun doing body removal. The parents were being scooped out of the cooling furnace.

Well, most of them anyway.

There was still a pile of slippery meat stacked on the floor next to the oversized oven. That was Mr. St. Clair. To quote Danielle:

"Dad's fat ass hadn't fit in the furnace."

Yeah . . . Hotch closed his eyes for a moment . . . these were the days he really hated this job. The things that they saw, and the stories that they had to hear. Like tonight, Dani telling them how after she and Darren had tortured and slaughtered her parents, that they'd tried to burn the mangled bodies in the furnace.

That was of course the barbecue odor.

But it wasn't quite barbecue. Burning flesh, burning hair . . . burning organs, it had an odor all its own. An odor that was making even the most seasoned of these forensic technicians, work a regular rotation out to the yard for fresh air.

It was the only way to avoid throwing up.

Hotch himself had a mask over his face, and his hand over his mask, but he was still planning on heading out in a moment. Now that he'd seen the grid was being outlined for the sonar, he was just taking one last look around the wide open space. He really didn't want to come back down here again, so he was hoping to confirm as many of the details of Dani's confession that he could now. And she'd shared so much it was a lot to take in.

But again, she'd talked for hours.

And like any fifteen year old girl . . . sociopath or not . . . there had been stars in her eyes for most of the evening. So in essence her confession was really more her telling of a love story. One punctuated with tales of brutality and death. But that was the only kind of love that Dani and Darren had been capable of.

They were the couple from hell, take two.

Darren was Darren McCluskey, age twenty-six. The son of a promiscuous, alcoholic, single mother, he was a high school dropout who worked as an auto mechanic over at Gypsy's Garage in Stars Hollow. One day on his lunch break, he'd spotted a pink cheeked, fully blossomed, fourteen year old Danielle (Dani) at the annual picnic basket auction on the town common.

He was instantly smitten.

By Hotch's review of the pictures in the home, he knew that even back then . . . fourteen months earlier . . . Danielle had the physique of an older girl. Still clearly not old ENOUGH for Darren though, who was then twenty-five, but he didn't care. At that point he already had two misdemeanor public indecency charges in his jacket.

He liked to expose himself to young girls.

And though there was nothing officially on his record about him having sex with young girls, besides Dani of course, the investigation was still in very early hours. Right now all they had was the paper record, which generally only told part of a pedophile's story.

They'd find the rest on interviews around town.

That was the focus for the next day, to help the sheriff outline a plan to fill in the missing pieces of the case. But for now the pieces that they had were bad enough. Fate had arranged an opportunity for a budding pedophile, and pre-teen sociopath, to meet. Darren had bid on Danielle's picnic basket.

It had a bright pink ribbon.

That basket and that ribbon would one day turn up on Cindy Henderson's front porch. On that day it would house poor little Ralphie's mutilated remains. But on the day that Darren and Dani met, it was being used for its original, more mundane purpose.

Lunch.

So on a red blanket, under a weeping willow, in one of the most idyllic communities Aaron Hotchner had ever visited, two dark and vicious souls found each other.

If only they'd killed themselves instead.

But they hadn't. They'd fallen in love . . . as much as either of them were capable of that emotion . . . and a set of events fell into motion. Events that even now Hotch was struggling to wrap his mind around. They weren't the worst killers that he'd come across, but there was something so disturbed and twisted about not only their crimes, but their love, that he knew they were going to stick with him for a long time.

Perhaps even to the end.

And part of it was those God damn baskets. Hotch had already thought that they were a horrible enough method of delivery for the slaughtered pets. But once he'd discovered . . . through the interview with Danielle . . . WHY, it was that they'd chosen to leave the animal remains in those baskets, he'd come again to one of those moments where he truly wondered why it was he had let his wife and son go, so that he could stay and live in this world.

That loss seemed without purpose.

Because those baskets with the bright pink ribbons and the shredded family pets . . . they had been Darren's love letters to Danielle. They thought the imagery was romantic.

A symbol for the day that they had met.

It was one of those rare instances where Hotch had come close to completely losing it during an interview. He'd just wanted to throw Danielle against the wall and scream, "what the fuck is WRONG with you people?!" But he already knew what was wrong with them.

Too many things to name.

So he'd reigned in his temper and curled his fists as Emily continued with her deceptively calm . . . he knew the revulsion she was feeling . . . conversation with Danielle.

She'd learned that Darren and Dani shared a love of pizza, John Woo movies, New Wave music, sexual bondage, sexual exhibitionism, and the torture of small animals.

The occult was Danielle's special hobby.

And with her as the clear alpha of the pair . . . age and gender were not always indicative of level of control . . . their animal abductions had begun as a way for Dani to gauge Darren's love for her. Bring me a puppy.

It was a child's test.

Probably the last shred of connection that she had with the little girl she once was. But that little girl . . . and any innocence she might have possessed . . . was long dead. It was clear from her behavior upstairs with him and Emily both . . . alternating between a teenager's vacuous self-involved chatter, to unprovoked threats of violence, to raunchy flirtation . . . that not only had she been physically tortured by her mother and father, but she'd also been sexually abused by both of her parents as well. So she saw sex as a weapon of violence.

And a means of control.

That was in part how she got Darren to do the most dangerous part of their work . . . actually going to and from the homes to first grab the animal, and later deposit the remains. By her own admission, Dani had been the one that had done most of the actual slaughtering.

She emulated what she'd seen her parents do . . . and she got off while she was doing it.

For Dani . . . with her background . . . sex and pain and happiness and blood, they were all mixed together. You couldn't have any one of those, without all of the others.

If she wasn't a monster, Hotch might have felt sorry for her.

But, she was a monster.

She was the one that had sourced out the pentagrams, and she was the one that had picked out the families to torture. They'd discovered that the actual butchery of the animals was somewhat incidental to her little reign of terror. The thing Danielle enjoyed most was just watching the kids open their picnic baskets. Seeing their happy little faces contort in horror, right before they threw up or began to screech in horror.

She would videotape it, and then watch it later as porn. She was beyond fixing, beyond redemption.

Beyond humanity.

She'd butchered her own cat just to become that crucial inverted edge of the pentagram. She'd admitted that in the interview too. And the only reason that they'd done the interview in the kitchen, rather than at the sheriff's office, or the local state police barracks, was because Dani wouldn't leave the property. When they'd tried to put her in backseat of a squad car, she'd thrown a fit so violent, that one of the four deputies trying to hold her down, had ended up having to go to the hospital. She'd bit off the tip of his finger.

Fortunately she'd spit it back out.

Cannibalism was the one thing that her family wasn't into.

So after they'd gotten the deputy reunited with his fingertip, and Dani into full restraints, Hotch had reassessed her pathology. And he'd realized the reason that she didn't want to leave the property yet, was because of what she and Darren had done in the basement.

The slaughtering of the elders.

It was her crowning achievement, she'd finally enacted her revenge, she stole their power . . . and she was insistent on telling her story to someone.

So Hotch let her.

In exchange for full disclosure of all crimes . . . they'd gotten a public defender out to bear witness and take notes for a diminished capacity defense that would never fly . . . Hotch had traded a visit to the hospital to see Darren. Danielle had agreed.

But she didn't want to talk to him about the details.

She'd wanted to talk to a woman. Only another woman would understand how much she loved Darren. That's what she'd said. So Emily had had to take point.

Though Hotch tried to step in as often as possible.

But once Emily got Danielle going, they got, well, more than they had bargained for. Not initially realizing the level of abuse or pathology that they were dealing with . . . they hadn't found the trophy albums yet . . . Hotch hadn't realized the level of atrocities that were going to be outlined.

Both hers and her parents.

Starting with Dani's earliest memories of getting her fingers burned as a toddler, right up to today when she'd locked her mother in the Iron Maiden right before she had Darren hoist her bound father up on the Judas Cradle, it was one piece of nightmarish imagery after another.

They'd even had had sex while her parents were screeching in agony.

Sometimes Hotch worried that he was growing numb to the violence of his world, but then he'd come across a killer like Dani, and if nothing else, she'd set his mind straight on that point. These stories still made his stomach hurt and his chest ache.

The job hadn't destroyed his soul yet.

Small mercy.

Though he had been admittedly conflicted about one point that Dani had shared. The reason that Bill and Ellen St. Clair had been tortured and killed on today of all days, was because he and Emily were on the way to the house. So . . . on some level . . . those two people were dead because of them.

Or at least that's how Hotch saw it.

And he'd had to decide if that truth pleased him . . . or horrified him. He'd decided that it was a bit of both.

But he wasn't quite okay with that.

But apparently when Dani and Darren heard that the FBI was investigating the animal slaughters, they'd thought that their time was running out. For Darren that was his final stressor, but for Dani it was an opportunity.

She wasn't about to get arrested before she'd finished what she'd started.

And what she'd started all those months earlier, was a game. One that was always going to end with the murder of her parents.

She'd just been biding her time.

So she'd faked the stomach flu to have an excuse to stay home. Darren had barricaded the doors from the outside, and then climbed up the buckling trellis and into her upstairs bedroom window.

And then while her parents were still eating breakfast, the two of them had gone down into the kitchen with another basket. This one also had a pretty ribbon, and it was full of tricks.

Lengths of rope, an assortment of knives, a couple of claw hammers, a couple of lighters, a pack of cigarettes . . . and a half dozen sharpened pieces of rebar.

It was sadist's rape kit.

The St. Clairs had taught their daughter well.

Of course little did they know at the time, that the lessons would be turned on the teachers. But based on the little smile on Danielle's face, and the Polaroids that they'd found in the basement, the student had definitely surpassed her teachers.

And once they were done . . . and had sex one last time on the bloodied drop cloth . . . Darren had gone to wait for the FBI to turn down Pearberry lane. When Emily had asked how they knew when they'd be coming . . . after all their visits weren't scheduled at any particular times . . . Dani told her that she'd pretended to be her mother, and had called around to the other families with dead pets (it was a small community) to find out what had happened on their interviews.

She figured out their pattern of visits . . . geography . . . by call number five. Then she'd calculated how many hours she'd have to torture her parents, before they'd be coming up her front drive.

She'd even built in their likely break times.

Hotch had to hand it to the girl, she was good. It was a miracle that they'd caught her so young. With skills and a pedigree like hers, she'd had the potential to have been a hall of famer in the serial killer trade.

Her parents would come close to that level of fame.

If only for the fact that married couples . . . who spawned their own murderous children . . . were somewhat of a rarity for their books. Hotch was hard pressed to think of another example at that moment.

And though he knew . . . without a shred of a doubt . . . that Dani's parents were creatures whose crimes had far surpassed hers and Darren's, he couldn't shake that faint dig knowing that those two people were dead SOLELY because he had called their house that morning. Though he knew that it was probably a good sign . . . if not a slightly masochistic one . . . that he was capable of feeling ANY level of grief, over those horrible people's deaths. Again . . . he took a slow breath . . . he wasn't a lost quite cause yet.

But he did know that it was time to get the fuck out of this cellar.

He'd cross checked his notes against the Polaroids still on the walls . . . Forensics would be collecting them . . . and the he'd seen them finish laying the grid of multi-colored strings and wooden posts.

The sonar team would begin looking for bodies now.

He could go.

/*/*/*/*/*/

Hotch stepped out onto the sagging front porch, and put his glove clad hand up on the door jamb to brace himself. Then he pulled off his booties and dumped them into the barrel that had been placed there specifically for that purpose.

After the booties went in, he threw in his mask, and then first one glove . . . and then the other.

When they left in the morning, the Forensics team would dispose of everything as part of the biohazard cleanup. That was one of the pluses of always being on the visiting team.

All of the physical clean-up was handled by the locals.

Which was particularly fortunate at the moment, because as Hotch checked the time, he saw that it was now closing in on eleven pm. And after a sixteen plus hour day immersed in this world of death and depravity, he wasn't in the mood to do anything besides take a hot shower and go to bed.

And maybe try to get a bite to eat somewhere in there too.

His nose wrinkled at the lingering smell on his clothes . . . but something vegetarian. He was going to be off meat for a few days at least.

But . . . he took a slow breath . . . that was neither here nor there. At the moment all he wanted was to figure out how the hell they were getting back to the Dragonfly. With their car totaled, he and Emily were going to be dependent on someone from one of these other departments or agencies giving them a ride.

Great . . . Hotch scrubbed his hands down his face . . . that's just what he wanted to do at the crack of midnight, start begging strangers for a lift.

'All right just suck it up Aaron,' he thought with a neck roll as he looked out over the crammed lot of emergency vehicles, 'it's hardly the worst thing that you've had to deal with today.'

So first things first, he told himself, just find Emily. And then find a way back to Stars Hollow.

Hopefully before morning.

Hotch squinted as he looked out into the artificial daylight. Though he knew it was technically pitch black, the State Police had set up enough portable sodium lights to illuminate the whole length of the front yard, ten feet in any direction going into the woods, and the entire length of the rutted driveway. But even with that degree of brightness, trying to find a familiar face in the mess of strangers hovering about was not easy.

There were just so many people.

But finally Hotch's eyes widened when he caught sight of the one pretty face that he was looking for. She was sitting cross legged on the hood of a blue, four door sedan. Hotch had no idea who it belonged to, but he presumed that Emily did. Because it was generally considered poor manners to climb around on the hoods of strangers' cars.

Especially when all of the strangers in the vicinity were carrying guns.

So Hotch took a breath and started down the steps.

The Ford was parked near the outer edge of the dozen or so marked and unmarked, cruisers, vans and SUVs lining the property. And with so many vehicles to maneuver around, it took him maybe a minute or two to cut across the yard.

But before he'd even reached the car, Emily had raised her head. And seeing him coming over, she slowly began to slide down off the hood.

He walked up just when her feet were dropping to the unpaved ground.

And seeing her stumble slightly . . . one of her boots had half landed in a chuck hole . . . he quickly put his hand out to steady her.

"Thanks," came Emily's soft murmur as he silently guided her around to the side of the car. "My legs are getting a little stiff in the cold." Then she dug her hand into her pants pocket and pulled out a key ring.

It had just one key on it.

"The car's for us." She said with a jerk towards the driver's side door a few feet away, "Agent Edelstein said we could keep it until we go home. His people doubled up when they left here a few minutes ago."

Then a touch of bitterness came into her tone.

"I think they figured that this way nobody would get stuck having to drive us back to the inn."

Though part of Emily knew that the gesture . . . giving them their own car . . . was in principle a 'nice' one, she just wasn't overall feeling particularly charitable in her thoughts at the moment. She was actually feeling like she wanted to throw up. Or perhaps sob in the bathtub for an hour.

Just anything to get this poison out of her system.

This terrible place, and these terrible people, she'd had enough. She'd enough of all of it. Them. Everything.

She just wanted to go home.

All she was praying for was to keep it together until they got back to the inn . . . or at least out of the driveway.

She didn't want to lose in front of anyone.

Hotch nodded as he took the key from Emily's hand.

"Ah, okay. Well either way, that was nice of them."

Though Emily was right, it probably was a bit self-serving too, but that didn't matter. As long as he didn't have to beg anyone for a ride, that was good enough.

So as Emily headed around the front of the car, Hotch stepped over and opened the driver's side door. He slid in onto the bench seat. A second later . . . just as he was putting the key in the ignition . . . Emily did the same from the other side.

Even after they'd pulled both their doors shut, the four little overhead dome lights stayed on for a moment. And looking across the front seat, Hotch's eyes flickered worriedly over Emily's face. Her features were tight.

And she was much too pale.

He knew that she was tired and stressed . . . any one of the things she'd dealt with that day could have been enough to knock her on her ass . . . but he was just worried about her shutting down again like she had that morning. The day had been just been too much for anyone, even for someone as strong as Emily, to mentally process.

They were going to have to have a conversation at some point.

But he knew that this wasn't the place to get it into anything with her. So when the overhead lights blinked off, he put a pin in his worries.

He just had to keep it professional until they got back to the Dragonfly.

So he slipped on his seat belt, took a breath and put the car in gear.

After he'd maneuvered around the two cruisers parked in their immediate vicinity, he passed the sheriff's checkpoint set at the top of the driveway . . . aka Pearberry Lane, which possessed just the one house . . . and then started down towards the main road.

A few seconds . . . and a lot of swirled up dust later . . . they cleared the second checkpoint at the bottom of the drive.

There was a cordon up there, and they passed a group of news vans . . . most were Connecticut affiliates, but one was from New York . . . reporters, and general gawkers trying to see what was happening up at the house. Hotch knew that the sheriff had given a general briefing at ten. But with so many people working the crime scene, Hotch also was sure that at least some of the gory details had already spread beyond the yellow tape.

In a county as small as this one, by morning half the little towns in the area would probably know as much about the case as he did.

With a sigh, Hotch turned left heading away from the vultures that had arrived to pick the carrion. Slowly he drove by the random scattering of isolated houses and far placed street lights that passed as a 'neighborhood.' Then a couple minutes later he turned left again.

Now they were off into the darkness of one of the back roads.

Once they were completely alone . . . even the moonlight was being blocked out by the overhanging trees . . . out of the corner of his eye, Hotch saw Emily slump against the passenger door.

Then she laid her head against the glass.

When he glanced over again, in the glow of the dashboard lights, he could see that her hands had begun twisting in her lap.

And he so badly wanted to reach over and take one.

But he didn't.

Though he had on more than one occasion held Emily Prentiss' hand to provide comfort either to her, or to himself, he was afraid of breaking her composure . . . however much was left . . . if he touched her now. So again he told himself to just wait until they reached the Dragonfly. It would only be another fifteen or twenty minutes.

That wasn't so long.

But as Hotch looked over again at Emily's twisting hands and broken slump, he realized that twenty minutes was going to be entirely too long. And with just two lanes of straight road, and no traffic in sight, Hotch decided to try and shave those fifteen to twenty minutes down to ten or twelve.

So he put his foot down on the accelerator.

But then he caught sight of a glint off in the trees . . . eyes. Specifically deer eyes.

They were reflecting off the headlights.

And then Hotch remembered that deserted back roads were a favorite place for deer to wander out into. He pulled his foot back.

Regardless of either of their mental states, clearly a twenty minute car ride was better than them running into a deer going seventy miles per hour.

Still though, once the car dropped back down to the posted thirty-five mph, Hotch let out a faintly disgusted huff. Then he let his gaze flicker back across the front seat again. He was just in time to see Emily wiping her hand across her face.

She was crying.

Oh . . . he felt a dig in his chest as his eyes snapped back to the road . . . damn it.

For a moment he wasn't sure what to do. With the way her body was angled away from his, he knew that she was trying to keep her tears from his view. Which was fine, he respected that. But seriously, what kind of an asshole would he be, if he actually SAW that she was crying, and still didn't do anything at all to help her?

A pretty huge one.

Still though, he didn't know if she would appreciate him calling attention to her breakdown. He decided to give it another minute to see if she pulled herself together.

So with his jaw grinding, he stared out the front windshield, watching the bugs smash into it.

Their headlights were the only illumination for miles in any direction. And without street or city lights, and the trees masking the stars, their surroundings were nearly pitch.

It was somewhat apropos given their moods at the moment.

Just then, Hotch noticed that one of Emily's hands had loosened from the knot in her lap. It had fallen down onto the seat next to her. And though it was still curled into a fist, it was now just a few inches away from him.

He could easily touch it.

He bit his lip, looked back out the front windshield, and then back over to this kind, sweet, woman who'd just had one of the worst days on the job, that his recent memories could recall her having.

Oh . . . his jaw snapped . . . fuck it.

With the decision made to do what he could for her now . . . they could still talk later . . . Hotch blindly reached out and across the seat. When his hand bumped into hers, he risked a quick glance down to see one set of fingers in relation to the others.

Then he tangled the two sets together.

He could feel the familiar softness of her skin, and the delicate bones in her fingers and wrist. Again, it wasn't the first time that he had held Emily's hand, but he was starting to wonder at what point he began to map it in his own mind.

That he could now identify the feel of it even in the dark.

It was a thought for another day . . . or perhaps a thought best simply pushed away . . . so he just focused on stroking his thumb along the inside of her wrist. Slowly, back and forth, trying to sooth with his touch, something that he knew really couldn't be fixed at all.

But he had to at least try.

He just wanted her to know that he was there . . . and that he cared that she was sad.

And that she wasn't alone in the dark.

Mostly he was just so afraid of her sinking back into that terrible depression from earlier in the day. And as he saw her free hand curl up right before she pressed her fist to her mouth, he knew then that she was trying to stifle a sob.

Without a word, he hit the directional and eased them over to the side of the road.

Then he put on the hazards, and put the car in park.

With the engine noise now quieted, even with the windows up, the sounds of the forest were much clearer.

As was the erratic breathing from the woman beside him.

With his right hand still holding hers, he reached over with his left to undo his seat belt. Then he reached a little farther and undid hers as well.

And though she half mumbled/half sobbed, an "I'm fine." He simply ignored it as he turned and reached across the front seat.

He shifted a little closer, then he tugged her over and against his chest.

As she began to sob into his jacket, he heard a muffled, "please don't tell anyone I cried on duty."

And he felt a fresh ache in his stomach . . . why would she even feel the need to make the request? Did she believe that their relationship was that one sided? That he didn't respect the bond that they had formed?

Did she think that he would really betray her like that?

They were questions that he wanted to ask. But as he rubbed his hand up and down her back, and felt her slim frame shaking with the continuous sobs, he knew that he couldn't.

This wasn't about him.

Still though, he needed to respond to what she'd said. She'd made a request.

And he needed to answer it.

"Prentiss," he murmured softly against her hair, trying to keep the hurt out of his tone, "I would never tell anyone about this. You've certainly kept enough of my secrets. I hope you know that I would never betray any of yours."

Emily sniffled and leaned back, scrubbing her hand across her face. Even in the semi-dark she could see the crease in Hotch's brow, and how he was biting his lip. And feeling a pang of guilt for hurting him when he was just trying to help her, she reached out and patted his chest.

"I do know that," she said with another sniffle, "I'm sorry. I'm just upset. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

Then before he could respond . . . she knew that he'd just lie and say that he wasn't hurt when he clearly was . . . she moved in to wrap her arms around his neck, pulling him even closer than they'd been a moment ago.

"Thanks for stopping."

The words were thick with emotion and muffled into the collar of his jacket, but still, Hotch understood Emily just fine all the same.

"Of course," he whispered back with a tight squeeze, "anything you need Prentiss. We'll stay until you're ready to go."

Then he took a breath, and turned his face back into her soft hair, inhaling the remnants of her morning routine. The scent of her shampoo which had become so familiar these last few years, it was now a sort of comfort in and of itself. And underneath that familiar scent, was a soapy smell that was new. It smelled like lavender and mint.

It was from the Dragonfly, he realized, one of the samples in the bathrooms. Now he'd associate that with Emily too.

He closed his eyes and he breathed her in. Not just the physical scent that brought him comfort, but also the grief and the pain and the loss. It was hers, and it was his.

It was theirs to share.

And that's how they ended up spending ten minutes sitting in the Connecticut woods. He just held her until she was done crying, then he held her until her breathing had evened out. And he told himself that he was doing it just for her. Because he owed her, and because she needed someone to look after her.

But that was a lie.

He was doing it for himself too . . . he needed someone to look after him. And holding Emily helped fill a little of that emptiness in his own soul, it pushed a little of the blackness away. She had been his touchstone through the worst days of his divorce, and in many ways he felt . . . especially in moments like this . . . that she was one of his few connections to his old life. Not that Emily reminded him of Haley, it wasn't that, but more of a world where a soft touch and a sweet smile, were gifts that he was given all the time. They were gifts that brought him happiness. That made his days bearable.

That was back when he had someone who loved him.

It seemed so long ago.

Which was why he really didn't want to Emily go. So when she finally took a deep breath . . . and he felt her begin to loosen her hold . . . he steeled himself for the pain of her pulling away.

It was one more hit in a night where he'd already been pummeled into the ground.

Then she was looking up at him, and Hotch pushed aside that kick in his gut to focus on her . . . because that's what he did. He always pushed his needs to the bottom of the list.

And he did that every damn day of his life.

"Do you feel better?"

His words were gentle, as was his touch when his fingers moved to brush the strands of hair back from her wet face. And she nodded. And even gave him a little smile.

"Yeah," Emily sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand, "I do. Thanks. This day, being in that house, it's been like," she swallowed, "breathing in poison. It was in my head, and my chest," her voice started to thicken again, "it made them hurt. And it made my stomach hurt. But now," she took a shallow breath, "it's not quite so bad."

And then she sniffled again, and gave him another small, watery smile.

"You made it better."

When she and Hotch connected . . . as they were now . . . Emily found that the comfort that she could get from him, was very different than anything that she gained from her relationships with the others on the team. Ironically the others . . . even Dave . . . she considered more traditionally 'friends,' but Hotch was something else entirely. Something more . . . and something less.

But he'd always been something special.

But whatever he was, her continuing effort to try and label their relationship . . . to put it into one of her boxes and tuck it away . . . always left her coming up short. Because mostly though, as she saw him give her a faint smile right before he patted her hand, she was just glad that he was in her life.

Though she thought that it was terrible that they could only really connect this way, this personally, when one of them was sad.

Or broken.

And right now she was sad, and he was broken. Though of course he would deny that too. But she'd seen it in his eyes when he carried that little boy downstairs. And she wished that there was something that she could do for him . . . something like he had just done for her . . . but she wasn't sure if he would actually allow it.

Even when he would make the effort to extend himself for her, he was always so careful and tried so hard, to remain stoic. He kept his real feelings . . . his real pain . . . to himself.

He'd been like that from the beginning.

But as she saw him looking at her in the faint light, with his teeth sinking into his lip, she could suddenly see what he usually kept hidden. All of that pain and misery, it was clear on his face.

His mask had slipped.

Feeling her own features twisting in sympathy, she reached out and touched his cheek. Then she cupped his jaw with her palm. And rather than pulling away as he usually would when she tried to get him to open up, he stayed perfectly still. A moment later he winced and his eyes fell shut.

And hers started to burn again.

"What can I do?" She asked with a catch in her voice.

She saw him swallow, and then slowly he shook his head.

"I'm okay," he whispered, as his eyes slowly opened again, "I just needed a second."

For a moment Emily stared at him, her palm still cupping his jaw, her thumb stroking along his cheek. Finally she took a breath and gave him a sad smile.

"You're a terrible liar."

Then she leaned up and kissed his forehead.

"If you want to talk," she murmured against his skin, "I'm always here." She leaned back, another sad smile touching her lips as she patted his cheek.

"I'm good for hugs too." Then she sighed and turned to get a tissue from the console. "I know you don't do hugs though." She looked back up at him, "but you should," she continued softly while wiping her face, "they make you feel better."

Hotch's teeth were sinking into his lower lip as he watched Emily dabbing at her teary, makeup smeared face.

He so badly wanted to say something. To talk to her like she told him that he could. To tell her all of the things that were weighing on his soul. How Andy had looked like Jack. And how his chest ached when he had listened to Dani tell her story.

And how he had wanted to throw up when she told them about the baskets.

But mostly he wanted to tell Emily that he did do hugs. And that he knew that they made you feel better. And he knew that because he used to hug his wife all the time. And his boy.

And his mom when he was little.

But he didn't have anyone to hug anymore. He was alone now.

Most of the time anyway.

So he did the best that he could, with the coping mechanisms he had left . . . repression, anger, and denial. All ruthlessly applied, in equal parts.

And he wanted to tell Emily that he knew that they weren't working. That he wasn't doing well. That this world they that lived in was just too dark and too ugly.

Just too much.

He couldn't do it all alone.

But he didn't say any of those things. Instead he took a breath. Then he reached down and took a clean tissue from the little pack between them.

He looked back up at Emily.

"I'll get it."

His words were a whisper as he brushed her fingers away.

It was all that he could for her, for himself. It was all the contact that he had left. And he didn't know if she understood that. But either way, she sat quietly while his fingers pressed into her jaw, and he gently dabbed and smoothed the eyeliner and mascara smeared around her eyes.

He was trying to make it pretty again.

Emily's eyes began to burn once more while watching Hotch focused so intently on fixing her make up.

Sometimes he was so very sweet, and so very sad, that her heart ached for him. And when he was done and leaned back, his fingers fell from her cheek.

She caught them as they fell.

Then she lifted them back up, and pressed her lips to the back of his hand. She kissed it. And when she looked up at him, his eyes were watering.

She'd broken through a wall.

It was progress.

So even as he tried to blink away the tears and turn his attention back to the car, she kept his hand clenched in hers. Though she did let go for a moment while they redid their seat belts and he shifted the ignition back into Drive.

But once they were on the road again, she reached over and touched his hand where it was resting on his thigh. She left her fingers there, stroking up and down on the small patch of skin below his cuff.

He was trying to pretend like he too busy driving to notice, but she saw him swallow and blink.

And after a minute . . . a minute when she was sure he was debating with himself . . . he finally turned his hand over, and caught her fingers in his. He linked them together.

It wasn't a hug.

But again, it was progress.

So she pulled their joined hands down and over to her lap. Then she pressed them against her stomach, and with her free hand as a bookend, she held them close.

There was a warmth and an intimacy from the act. And she did it partly as a comfort for him, and partly as a comfort for her, but mostly it was a reminder for them both.

They weren't alone.

And when Hotch put down the windows, and the cool night air filled the car, she just tightened her grasp.

"Thanks," he finally whispered. And her eyes crinkled faintly right before she murmured back.

"Just drive."

She heard him huff, and his hand squeezed hers for a moment. And though he again loosened his grasp, her smaller hand stayed enveloped in his larger one.

They didn't talk again for the rest of the trip.

A/N 2: Yes, I know I've put a butchering pedophile in Stars Hollow and completely tainted the picnic basket ritual. Oh well :) Seriously, though, too many weirdos in that town for there not to be a felon or two. I'm so much more UNcomfortable with people in small towns versus big cities simply because people DO trust strangers in small communities, and, well, you shouldn't. Nobody knows what the hell anybody's doing anywhere. It's always the people on the news saying "things like this just don't happen in our community" that clues me in to something particularly horrific, happening right there in that community.

But baskets and ribbons were mentioned in both the lighter and darker elements of the earlier chapters here, and it was always the plan to pull them together. Though I still felt like a really twisted a-hole when I actually wrote the lines in this chapter :)

On the less horrible side, moving towards their bonding, keep in mind this is a stage in their relationship that none of my other stories have really explored that closely. The in between from the closeness they'd achieved during his divorce, and then the later friendship that they'd built over the summer. So here, the connection exists, but the words, and the verbal sharing, don't. But they're still trying to now get through this case together. We'll see how that pans out.

Next update in a few days. And if you see any typos on this one, I'll get them when I read it over again Monday night. It was 13,000 words, so an untainted post, is a slim shot :)

And thank you everyone for the feedback, and for the nominations! Voting is now open on the Profiler's Choice Awards :)