The first month after JJ's encounter with the Winchester brothers the team kept a careful eye on her. Through she insisted she had not been harmed everyone was still trying to ease her back into the job. Hotch had suggested for her to speak with a therapist, to work through the emotions of being held hostage, but JJ refused. Garcia had suggest a spa weekend with Emily, but JJ said she was to busy but suggesting rescheduling the trip in the summer.
During the second month everyone began to notice subtle changes in her behaviour. It was nothing overt, simply a conspicuous phone call, or a strange book appearing on her desk beneath her normal mountain of files, but nothing got past the team of expert profiles. When JJ requested for time off no one it did not come as a surprise.
Derek was the one to go to her house, when her leave extended two weeks, just to check on her.
"JJ." Derek called as he let himself into the three-bedroom home she shared with Will and Henry.
Nothing appeared out of place. JJ's car was still in the driveway, keys in the bowl by the door, breakfast dishes for three in the sink, but Derek couldn't help but think something was off.
"Anyone home?" He called again as he walked farther into the house and down the hall thinking she was in the backyard and couldn't hear him. "I just came in to see how you were doing."
About to head out to the backyard something in the spare bedroom of the house, that Derek knew was used as an office, caught his eye. Pushing the door fully open revealing a sight normally reserved for the bedroom of obsessive unsubs.
Three walls of the room from floor to ceiling were filled with pictures, documents, and newspaper clippings. Approaching the wall Derek read the small print of a January newspaper telling about a bank robber- Dean Winchester.
"Derek." A shocked voice squeak from behind him.
Turning around Derek was faced with JJ's shocked expression. It was obvious she did not expect to find him here.
"What is all this?" Derek asked trying not to sound accusing- accusing of what he wasn't sure.
He didn't know what to make of anything in this room.
"I can explain." JJ started her eyes leaving Derek and fell to what he would later call the wall of craziness.
"I hope so. JJ we've seen stalkers with fewer pictures on their walls." He added trying to make light of the situation.
With a deep breath JJ started again. "This is everything we know about the Winchesters." She explained waving her hand towards the largest of the three walls. "Victims, signatures, witness reports, and patterns."
"The Winchesters don't follow a pattern." Derek reminded her. Every case involving Sam and Dean Winchester were different making predicting their movements nearly impossible.
"We didn't think they did, but I thought about how you tried to find me by profiling what they were hunting." JJ explained as she picked up a blue covered book from the small desk in the corner of the room. The title read a complete guide to the supernatural.
"You profiled the situations that would draw their delusions." Derek began to understand as he looked at a map along with what seamed to be papers unrelated to the Winchesters activity.
"I did a lot of research, talked to experts in demonology and folklore, and all the specialist all say that you can track supernatural creatures by the signs they leave. When I was with them, Dean had been specifically focused on a demon named Lilith." JJ explained, as she pulled pointed to a section of the wall with gruesome drawings of little monsters with pointed tails and pitchforks.
"Demons can be tracked by omens: electrical fluctuations, crop failures, electrical storms. It's like the way you can tell it's about to rain by looking at the sky. I can put the Winchesters in towns where events like these, and other omens, occurred." She continued.
"They don't always believe they were hunting demons, in Baltimore he said it was a ghost and in St. Louis a shape-shifter." Derek reminded her.
"Different creatures, different patterns." JJ nodded. "Any time there has been a high death rate in an area, or connections on a specific date the Winchesters show up even if the deaths are decades apart."
"I don't understand." Derek said unable to follow her thought pattern.
"Here. In 2006 the Winchesters were in Burkittsville Indiana, there were three missing couples." JJ said as she violently pointed to a wrinkled piece of paper.
"JJ they are from different states, all they have in common is they went missing on a road trip and were never seen again." Derek said as he gave the papers a once over. "There's no pattern here."
"I know, but I looked into the missing persons files and the routs they planed to take. In each rout they took they all crossed the same part of Indiana and always on the second week of April precisely one year after the other." By now her voice had went from calm and collective to rapid and exciting, like a teenager telling their parent about an exciting movie they had just saw.
"JJ that's not a pattern, that's a coincidence." Derek said trying to reel her back in.
"It was enough to bring the Winchesters to town." JJ stated defiantly.
Derek paused waiting for her to continue.
"I called the locals in Indiana. The town has suffered from bad weather and many of the farms in the area have gone out of business, leaving the town practically empty, but I was able to track down some people who lived there. Most didn't know anything or refused to talk to me, but one woman confirmed that Sam and Dean were in town on the anniversary date that the other couples had went missing." JJ declared.
There was a long pause and Derek's opinion could have gone only one of two ways. He could either declare her obsessed and in the need of counselling, or he could think she had found a breakthrough on the case.
"JJ I think you've figured out how the Winchesters chose their destination." He finally stated.
It was an impressive piece of information, to know the Winchesters located all their targets by looking at patterns, seeing as before there movements always appeared random.
"But how does that help us? These patterns are so obscure, and with so much time between them it would only be possible to realise this was what drew the brothers there after the fact." They didn't have the resources to piece together missing persons files that had even the slightest connection when they were years apart or to follow up on each crop failures and electrical storm.
"I can find them." JJ announced as Derek continued to read over the mountain of information JJ had collected.
"What?" Derek said questioningly.
"I've been doing this for months, at first everything seamed random and no rational mind would link these together. But after a while it became easier to find the patterns, and omens, that drew the Winchester to each town. I know how these guys think. They are not killers, or psychopaths; at least that's not how they see themselves. They are protectors. While having an dysfunctional co-dependent relationship, they work together to track these signs, find monsters and save innocent people.
'That is what they believe, unfortunately in their delusion they are killing innocent people, and they wont stop. But I can find them-I can stop them."
JJ paused. The Winchesters were suspected in a dozen murders, bank robberies and petty crimes, but despite what all the evidence said JJ didn't feel that it was that simple. Did they kill people? Yes she was certain of that. But were those people innocent? She didn't believe that they were the monsters the Winchesters thought they were but there were numerous reports of people claiming the Winchesters saved them.
She wanted to know the whole story and whatever the truth was it was her job to find them.
"You think you can find them?" Derek asked unsure how anyone could determine what town the Winchesters could see a pattern in.
"I already have." JJ said with confidence as she pulled a black marker from the desk and circled a small section of the map.
"This town has been displaying omens which would draw the Winchesters, and it's only hours away from where I suspect the Winchesters last stopped."
...
Hotch listened to the work JJ had done and while he had hoped she would use her time off to rest he had to agree with Derek's assessment- it was impressive work.
"Officially I can't approve of this." Hotch stated. "We haven't been invited in on any case in the area, or have circumstantial evidence to support that the Winchesters will be in the area. The Winchesters are considered inactive and the director doesn't feel it appropriate to have our team work on their case while their are more pressing active cases."
JJ understood that. It was her desk that all the case files landed on, it was her who decided which killer they investigate, and logically she knew that active killers were of higher priority then those who had gone dormant for months.
"That being said, I don't have any say in how you spend your time off." Hotch stated seriously.