Who We Have Become

"The first time ever I saw your face,
I thought the sun rose in your eyes.
And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave
To the dark and the endless skies."

~Ewan MacColl.

*Author's Note: This first section is literally copied from Pay the Piper (Ch 47, for those of you just dying to know), although it's been tweaked a little. But rest assured, the rest is brand spankin' new.

As always, a deep thank you to everyone who has followed, favorited, or reviewed this story so far.*

March 2012. Quantico, Virginia.

Jordan Elaine Strauss stood at the threshold of her mother's office, wishing for all that she was worth that the earth would simply open up and swallow her whole.

She had to do this. She was the eldest, this was her responsibility. She was the one who had finally pushed her mother to seek treatment (the first time), the one whom her mother had called on her way to detox (the second time), and now she was the one who helped her mother adjust to life in the sober lane.

Mom was coming home next week, after fourteen weeks in a treatment facility. It was easy to stay sober in a room with four stark white walls, where no one let you have any freedom or control, when you were forced to stay sober because of your location.

By now, Jordan knew enough about alcoholics in general (and her own mother in particular) to know that her mother kept stashes of alcohol everywhere. Which was why she was here, at Quantico, in her mother's office—to clear away any temptation that might be left behind.

She hated the sneakiness of it, the distrustfulness behind the action, the understanding that she was entering a place that did not belong to her, a place that she was not invited. But it was an act of love, and she would perform this duty if it killed her.

"Are you—do you need some help or something?" Her mother's assistant, Carrington, was hovering over her shoulder, hands clasping and unclasping nervously. This was the first time they'd ever met, although they'd spoken on the phone several times as Jordan was trying to arrange access into the building (Carrington had offered to clear out the office for her, but Jordan didn't want anyone else seeing, didn't want anyone else knowing her mother's dark secrets, because she had an overwhelming need to protect her mother, because that was Jordan's life philosophy—family first, at the expense of everything else).

"No. No, I think I'll be fine," Jordan snapped out of her stupor and took a deep breath as she finally entered the room.

It was calm, well organized, logical and tasteful and so like her mother, with nice colors and good, solid furniture. The sense of Erin that filled this room was so strong that her daughter felt a sudden tightness in her chest, a longing for simpler times, a longing for her mother to be what she used to be—strong and sheltering and in-control and loving and present and here, with Jordan, with her family, where she belonged.

She moved gingerly, as if she somehow feared disturbing the balance of her mother's room, slowly taking in the contents atop the desk—the family photos from years ago (they hadn't had a family portrait in ages, and now it seemed like a sign of the times), the little paperweights, the worry stone worn with grooves left by hours of being rubbed by her mother's thumb (Erin used to keep them everywhere, in a bowl by her bedside, one in the cup-holder of her car, some in a dish in the living room, and she'd simply pick them up, almost without even realizing it).

She shouldn't be here. With a sudden sense of urgency, Jordan scooped up the gilded wastebasket, quickly opening and closing the drawers and cabinets of the large hutch-credenza behind her mother's desk, trying not to look at anything, trying only to find the little bottles hidden between the binders and books and stacks of papers. She moved to the filing credenza, then to the bookshelf on the other side of the room. She saved the desk for last.

The commotion in Erin's office had suddenly fallen silent, and Carrington took a moment to glance in the open doorway. Erin's daughter sat at the desk, looking so much like her mother that it took Carrington by surprise. She hadn't seen the resemblance until now—it wasn't a likeness in physical traits, but a likeness in physicality, the way Jordan's shoulders shifted forward, as if she were carrying the weight of the world, the downward turn of her mouth that seemed like resting bitch face but really was a mind distracted by too many thoughts and not enough answers, the strange airiness of her fingers lightly moving over the surface of the desk as she reached for a family photo, the clear determination of those green eyes as they searched for some unattainable answer in the picture frame.

Carrington had actually missed her boss—and sadly, she was pretty sure that she was the only person in the building who did. The people underneath Erin knew her too well to miss her, and the people above her didn't know her enough to miss her. Carrington knew her, and more importantly, she felt that she understood her. After seven years of taking care of Erin Strauss, Carrington had probably witnessed more sides of the woman than anyone else in the Bureau, and because of that up-close-and-personal view, she felt that she had a better grasp on Erin's true personality, on the daily demands of her position, on all the unique factors of her existence.

For the first time in almost fourteen weeks, Carrington had found someone who shared her sense of loss (though she knew and understood that Jordan's longing was deeper and stronger than her own, there was still some piece of empathy in it). She timidly stepped into the doorway, a small sad smile as she admitted, "You look like her, you know—sitting there, just like she does."

"We don't look alike," Jordan corrected, her voice matter-of-fact but not unkind (reminding Carrington of Erin yet again). "We just...we have the same mannerisms."

"That's what I meant."

"Oh." Jordan seemed as if she temporarily regretted her earlier statement, but she quickly covered whatever emotion flitted across her face before Carrington could actually identify it. After a beat, she motioned to the bonsai plant, "Thank you, for...taking care of it."

Carrington nodded, another soft smile on her lips as she admitted, "I couldn't let it die, or even...your mother would be upset, if I let it get unruly. It was her way of relieving stress, just zoning out for a few minutes, trimming the leaves. I could always tell how bad her day was, based on how much she pruned away."

Jordan gave a smile at the last comment.

"I come in here and trim it at the table," Carrington motioned to the little conference table at the other end of the room. "It feels too strange, sitting at her desk."

"It feels like her," Jordan agreed, looking around the room with a wistfulness that saddened her mother's receptionist.

"How is she?" Carrington took a few steps inside the room.

"She's well," the younger woman answered diplomatically, and Carrington suddenly remembered what Erin had once said about her eldest daughter—she's always been a grown-up, she was a four-year-old adult, always serious and sometimes sad.

She could see that, could even see the unspoken lines in Jordan's face as she turned to the window.

"I don't know when she's coming back here, though," Jordan admitted, giving a slight frown. There was another thoughtful silence, during which Carrington heard her sigh, saw her shift, felt her mentally weighing her next thought. There was something she wanted to share, something she wasn't sure that she should share, something rattling around in her chest that needed to be expressed in some way to someone (and Carrington understood that, understood that feeling of helplessness and loneliness, that feeling of singularity, of isolation, of needing to be connected).

Against her better judgment, Jordan finally voiced her thoughts, "She missed her birthday. Two weeks ago, I tried to go out to see her, but there was this thing, and I...I didn't go. When I called to apologize and wish her a happy birthday anyways, she'd forgotten. She said she hadn't really thought about it."

With a sudden shake of her head, Jordan turned back to the office, standing as she resumed a curt air, "I don't know why it meant so much to me, or why I'm telling you—"

"I'm glad that you did," Carrington spoke quickly, trying to soothe whatever jagged edges were left by the opening of this wound, by the vulnerability of the moment. Suddenly, she became shy again, but she continued onward, gently, hesitantly, "It's...it's good, sometimes, just to tell other people our stories. Because most of the time, they understand, because they have stories like that, too. And then...then you realize that you're not so alone."

Jordan took a moment to scrutinize the brunette with the same odd clinical efficiency of her mother, simply stating, "You have stories like that, too."

It wasn't a question, or even a guess. She understood that Carrington's expression was one of empathy, not merely sympathy.

The older woman simply nodded, but she didn't elaborate any further, so Jordan didn't pursue the subject.

"And thank you," Jordan motioned around the office. "For letting me in, for whatever strings you had to pull—"

"It wasn't a problem," Carrington assured her.

The younger woman arched her brow with an incredulous slow burn that Carrington had thought only Erin Strauss could express. "This is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'm pretty sure they don't just let anyone waltz in, especially if that person wants to rifle through the office of one of their section chiefs."

The brunette simply smiled in admission. Jordan picked up the waste bin again, which now rattled and chimed with the sound of bottles (though only a few, thankfully). "Um...I don't know if...can I just walk out of here with this—would they, will there be—"

"I'll take care of it," Carrington stepped forward, pulling the trashbag out of the bin and tying the top into a neat little knot.

"Just...I don't want to leave it for the cleaning staff because...well, I mean, I guess I know that people know about Mom, but I don't want to give them something else...it's, it's not right, they don't know her, and they don't know—"

"I'll take care of it," Carrington repeated, taking a moment to place a reassuring hand on Jordan's shoulder. "There's a back exit, next to some dumpsters—I'll toss it on my break."

The younger woman gave a quick nod of approval, her throat suddenly swelling with unshed tears. She shouldn't be here, shouldn't have to be cleaning up after her mother, shouldn't be the parent to her own parent, shouldn't be the one knowing this shame and this need for secrecy, shouldn't be a part of this world at all. And in a horrible ouroboros of emotion, she both resented her mother for putting her in the position and felt guilty for feeling such resentment, for being so petty and selfish and childish and all the things that she couldn't and shouldn't be right now.

Carrington had turned away to gingerly set the bag next to the door, and when she turned back to Jordan, she was shocked to see the immediate change that had overcome the younger woman. Jordan was still standing there, in her motorcycle boots and babydoll dress, looking like a little lost girl as she kept her arms wrapped awkwardly around the waste bin, clutching it with the white-knuckle fervor of someone whose world is slowly spiraling out of control or comprehension, tight-lipped and vacant-eyed, retreated so far into her own head that she seemed completely oblivious to Carrington's presence.

And, strangely enough, that was the moment in which she looked the most like her mother—the fear and uncertainty and conflicting thoughts deep within—and Carrington felt her own pang of regret (because she wished that she'd said something months ago, said something to Erin when she knew that she was slipping again, said anything to help, to ease whatever burdens she could for a woman who'd always seemed like a mountain of fortitude).

So she did the one thing that she never did to Erin, the one thing that she'd since wished she'd done.

Carrington moved back to Jordan with a quiet cautiousness, trying not to scare her or shake her too violently from her thoughts, gently taking the trash can away from the girl's arms. This brought Jordan back to the present moment, and she blinked slightly, offering a small, almost-apologetic smile. Her mother's receptionist set the waste bin back beside the desk, and then wordlessly wrapped her into a hug. There was a beat as the younger woman simply accepted the comfort, then her arms returned the embrace.

"I knew," Carrington confessed. "I should have said something sooner."

"Me, too," Jordan whispered. She pulled back, looking into Carrington's eyes so that she could understand the truth of her next statement, "It's not your fault."

"It's not yours, either."

This simple absolution renewed the tears brimming in Jordan's eyes. "I know. I don't always believe it, but I know."

"Believing and knowing aren't always the same thing," Carrington commiserated.

Jordan gave a small nod, her eyes latching onto Carrington's again (you have stories like that, too).

Dear god, her eyes. Those were the kind of eyes that took you by surprise, seemingly ordinary and unremarkable until you were caught by them, sliced to the soul by their depths, by their startling clarity and their precision, the kind of eyes that could take in the whole world with a single glance, the kind of eyes which toppled empires and made slaves of powerful men, the kind that stopped the air in your lungs with one accidental encounter, trapping your with one little peek at the soul beneath.

Just like her mother's eyes.

February 2015. The Strauss House. Vienna, Virginia.

Jordan stared at the empty space in the front hallway, where Dora Carrington had stood just a few moments before. In all the years that she'd known her mother's former secretary, she'd never seen her act this way.

Granted, for the most part, her interactions with Carrington had been simple and short—excepting that one time, the very first time they'd met, when Jordan had come to Erin's office to clear out any hidden stashes of booze while her mother was still in her fourteen-week detox program, and that experience had certainly been an exception in all sense of the word. But even then, Dora Carrington had always been a bit quiet, thoughtful, and relatively soft-spoken.

She'd certainly never treated Jordan as harshly as she just did—the younger woman still wasn't sure what had brought on such a scathing indictment.

Her cellphone buzzed. Her stomach rumbled in anxiety when she saw that it was from Carrington.

Call Cruz. Or I will.

Ever her mother's child, Jordan Strauss did not respond well to ultimatums. Still, she knew that Carrington had a point.

Her mind replayed the last look that the brunette had given her, the unmistakable reproach and frustration that had laced the pain and fatigue in her blue eyes. As if Jordan should've already known the answer to her question about Carrington's reason for getting involved.

She did know, she supposed, deep down. But that wasn't her fault.

Her phone buzzed again. Another text from Carrington—no message, just a virtual card file with Mateo Cruz's contact information.

She stared at her phone screen for a few beats, her mind turning and churning like a whirlpool. Either way, Chief Cruz was going to find out—and if Carrington ended up being the one who told him, it'd look bad for both of them (she planned to keep Dora's involvement out of the picture, to save the woman's job). But she couldn't keep this from David Rossi, either—hell, at this point, he might have already found this information on his own, but she couldn't take the chance of not knowing for sure. Despite Carrington's insistence that the BAU shouldn't be further involved, Jordan knew that there wasn't a group of people whom she trusted more—and as Carrington had pointed out, this was about saving Linnea's life, which was more important than protocol or an interdepartmental hierarchy.

Jordan opted for a compromise. She saved Cruz's VCF to her phone and called the cell number attached to it. As she waited for him to answer, she told herself that she'd call Dave as soon as she finished telling Cruz about the footage and Linnea's disappearance.

It certainly wasn't going to be a pleasant experience—for either phone call. Unfortunately, it was about on-par with the rest of her week.

Maybe she'd call Carrington, after she'd told Dave the news. Maybe she'd just leave the woman alone, letting her stew in whatever righteous indignation she'd somehow cooked up.

As if I made her do anything. Yes, I called and asked for her help—but she could've just as easily refused. I can't be held responsible for her actions.

A softer voice echoed that it was her past actions that had influenced Carrington's present ones, but she studiously ignored it. Another trait she'd learned from her mother—consummate self-denial.

FBI Evidence Lab, Main Building. Quantico, Virginia.

Jeff Masterson took a full beat to stare at the half-charred book that his supervisor had just tossed onto the metal lab table—the book wasn't nearly as startling as the announcement that had come with it.

"Wait, Reid isn't our doctor?" Rowena Lewis leaned forward as well, equally surprised.

Jack Dawson motioned to the journals that were currently in their hands. "Every reference to Reid calls him Agent Reid instead, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Rowena spoke slowly, her mind catching up to his insinuation.

"Why call him Agent Reid, but then use the term doctor in indirect reference?" Dawson asked. "It creates too much confusion."

"These were for Fuller's benefit only," Roe held up her journal, as if emphasizing her point. "It may seem confusing to us outsiders, but he's the one who wrote it—he'd know exactly whom the label was referring to."

"Like the way he uses she instead of a proper name," Jeff piped up. "He doesn't need to mention her name, because he knows who she is, and he'll remember who he's writing about, every time that he goes back to read the entries."

"So why didn't he do that with Reid?" Dawson queried, setting his hands on his hips. Mac made a small noise that implied her support for his point.

Jeff shrugged, "Maybe he didn't care about Reid—we've theorized that these journals were an insurance policy, maybe they were because of Reid."

"Makes sense," Roe agreed. "Fuller wants insurance against Reid because he doesn't trust him, but he doesn't want to implicate his female accomplice—because he does trust her."

"I think it's more than just trust," Mac informed them, taking the newspaper that had been tucked under her left arm and setting them on the table as well. "These last few installments in Fuller's newspaper collection—they have very little to do with the actual Amerithrax case. However, they do contain full articles on Dr. Maura Morrow, who just so happened to be one of the civilian experts assigned to the Amerithrax letters."

"So…the guy gets some kind of weird obsession with one of the experts from the case and…how does that translate to bombing the Bureau?" Jeff Masterson still felt lost.

"We're working on that," Dawson assured him. He nodded towards the journals again. "I just need you two to make sure my theory can hold water—that Morrow is both the doctor and your mysterious she."

Masterson looked skeptical, but Lewis nodded readily in acquiescence—not surprising, because Dawson had gotten the distinct impression that the woman was particularly fond of Spencer Reid.

"Meanwhile, I'll have Sura Roza look into this Dr. Morrow. We'll find out how she's connected to all of this." Dawson had his cellphone out, dialing the analyst's number.

She answered immediately, "What's up?"

"I need you to look into Dr. Maura Morrow—she was a civilian consultant on the Amerithrax case."

"Got it. And I need you to report back to Torchwood, Captain Jack. It hasn't been all quiet on the western front while you were away."

"I'm on my way," he promised, feeling a slight flicker of adrenaline and fear—it had to be something big if Sura couldn't just tell him the news over the phone. He returned his attention back to Mac, "Keep me posted."

"Of course," Mac gave a curt nod.

Dawson offered one last smile of thanks before leaving, doubling his pace as soon as he was out of the lab.

The distance between the main building and the Academy was an easy jog, made slightly more difficult by the cold air slicing into his lungs and the unevenness of the unfamiliar terrain. The hour was late and there were hardly any cars or agents around, giving the whole place an eerie, abandoned feeling which did nothing to help the unnameable un-ease that was sinking into his gut.

It must have been serious news indeed, because Sura Roza didn't greet him with a smile whenever he entered the small office-turned-headquarters.

"What've you got for me?" He closed the door behind him, turning to give his full attention to the woman behind the computer.

"It's not Sura you should be talking to," Judith Eden piped up from the sofa in the corner. Her shoes were off and her long legs were curled underneath her like she was enjoying a night by the fire instead of stuck in the FBI Academy. She looked up at him, her face lined with a fatigued seriousness. "Chief Cruz has some kind of new information. He wanted you to be here when he revealed it to us all."

Her words implied her usual sense of playful mocking, but she was too tired to infuse the right tone into them. She was back in her shoes, and back on her feet, "C'mon, we might as well join them now."

"If they're all waiting, why were you in here?" Jack asked.

"For reasons," was her enigmatic reply. "Now, c'mon."

Jack stepped aside, holding the door open for Jude as he looked back to Sura in slight confusion, "Torchwood?"

"It's a Doctor Who reference," Jude informed him on her way out. "I told her you wouldn't get it—uncultured American that you are."

She took a moment to turn to Sura Roza again, "And if he were that particular Jack, we'd all be in trouble."

"A girl can dream, can't she?" Sura merely winked.

"I have no idea if that's a good thing or a bad thing," Jack admitted.

"Depends on who you ask," Jude shrugged, making her way down the hallway.

Her team leader followed, quickly catching up to her long, uneven strides. "How many Captain Jacks are there in the world of fiction?"

"A lot, apparently. Captains are common and so are Jacks."

"Except me, right?"

"Well, you're not really a captain, are you?"

"I was captain of the debate team in high school."

"Of course you were."

Jack grinned at her deadpan delivery, moving forward again to open the door for her. They swept into the conference room, where Jess, Jonas, Cruz, and O'Donnell were already waiting.

It took Jack about five seconds to realize why Jude had been hanging out with Sura instead of waiting with the others—given Keller's body language, it was obvious that the two had gotten into yet another fight.

"Now that we're all here," Cruz stood, not wasting a moment. "I've just received a call from Jordan Strauss—who apparently has been trying to contact Linnea Charles unsuccessfully for the past twenty-four hours."

"We did ask her to reach out to Linnea," Dawson admitted with a curt nod, setting his hands on his hips. Shostakovich and O'Donnell were seated, but something told him that he wasn't going to be hanging around long enough to get comfortable.

"That's where it gets interesting—apparently, Linnea Charles has been missing for over a day. And by missing, I mean there's a compelling amount of evidence that she might have been kidnapped."

"Kidnapped?" Jude bolted in surprise.

Cruz gave a grim nod. "She was last seen at The District Times newspaper office—they have some security footage showing what could be foul play. Linnea also hasn't checked in with Jordan or any of her coworkers since yesterday afternoon. The only person she's supposedly contacted was her husband, and that was only via text."

"Oh god," Jonas Shostakovich murmured—because like everyone else in the room, he understood how easy it would be for a kidnapper to keep Linnea's phone and pretend to be her.

"Keller, you're with me," Dawson jerked his thumb towards the door. "We're going to look at that security footage now. Eden, call Linnea's husband, set up an interview."

Keller was already out the door and Jude was nodding in agreement.

"I'm sending you the info on who to contact at The Times," Cruz informed him, pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket. "A reporter named Johnny Adams. He'll be waiting for you—apparently Linnea suspected that there might be repercussions from covering this story, and she'd set up safeguards before her disappearance."

"Smart girl." Jack Dawson felt a wave of admiration for the report who'd been a pain in his side up until now. "Smart, smart girl."

He only hoped that she was smart enough to stay alive.

David Rossi's House. Rural Virginia.

Dave had barely finished his phone call with Jordan Strauss before his cell rang again—there wasn't a name on the caller ID, but he answered anyways. "Agent Rossi speaking."

"David Rossi, it's a good thing you're not anywhere near me right now, because I'd throttle you with my bare hands if I could." The English accent was unmistakably Judith Eden's, and the anger within it was equally unmistakable.

Honestly, there were so many reasons that she could possibly be pissed at him, he wasn't sure what to confess and what to deny. So instead, he said, "Would you prefer to clarify your statement, Agent Eden?"

"You know good and damn well what I'm on about." Interestingly, her accent was thicker when she was upset. "You've known that Linnea Charles has been missing for hours, and you didn't say word one about it."

Ah, so Jordan's warning had come home to roost—she'd called a few minutes ago, telling him about the security footage implicating Linnea's possible abduction, and also informing him that Matt Cruz was aware of the situation as well. Apparently Cruz had brought the Flying Js into the loop in the relatively short time that Jordan had spoken to him. His section chief's efficiency was both admirable and irritating as hell.

"And to make matters worse, I looked like a complete arse, calling Mason Charles to confirm the story—because he was under the mistaken notion that we here at the Bureau actually share information with one another." The sarcasm dripping through every syllable of her tone could've drowned a man. "Apparently, you already spoke to him, earlier today."

"I did. And I'm sure you were able to recover from the snafu with unequaled grace and charm."

"Flattery doesn't charge these batteries, Agent Rossi. Particularly when it's trying to divert my attention from the fact that you and your team willingly withheld information from the investigation—possibly at the expense of a woman's life."

She was right, of course. David had known that they'd messed up, the instant that Jordan had told him about the security footage. Still, he bridled at the accusation that he'd intentionally put Linnea Charles' life on the line. "Look, at that point, we didn't have any solid evidence that she was truly missing—there wasn't enough to even file a police report—"

"Oh, spare me the attempts at justification." Even through the phone, Rossi could feel Eden rolling her eyes. "I don't give a damn why you did it, really. Just be glad that I'm the one who made the call, and not Jack Dawson."

"Does he not know?"

"That you withheld vital information that may or may not save a woman's life? No, not yet. And I don't plan on telling him unless I have to." Now Eden's voice changed, softening ever-so-slightly, "Heaven help me, I understand why you did it, Rossi. But I'm still pissed as hell."

"I'm not sure what you want from me, Eden." He chose the path of honesty.

She sighed. "I want to make sure there's nothing else that I need to know before I go looking for this woman."

"I can tell you what Mason Charles told me, but it isn't much. And I can tell you that we've already checked her grandmother's house, where she'd supposedly told her husband that she'd be staying, and no one's been there in weeks—and that when we left Mr. Charles, he was convinced that Linnea wasn't missing at all, because nothing in her behavior was out of the ordinary. At the time, we had no solid proof that she'd been abducted."

"At the time?" Dammit, Eden was too quick a study. "So you know then, about the new evidence?"

He didn't answer. He didn't have to—and he didn't have to be a free-range vibe-feeling hippie to sense the anger coming across the line at him. However, she kept her emotions in check, her voice low and serious as she spoke, "I need to know that this won't happen again. I have to be able to justify not reporting this to Dawson and the others."

He understood that the others were Cruz and O'Donnell—men who could have his head on a platter, if the mood struck them.

Still, he had to be honest, "Eden, I can't promise anything right now—except that I will do whatever it takes to prove Spencer Reid's innocence."

"Even at the risk of some innocent civilian's life?"

He frowned at that question, which hung in the air for far too long. But before he could reply, the line went dead.

"Something wrong?" Alex Blake's quiet voice gently returned him to his own study, where he and Alex had bunkered down for a few more hours of scouring through potential cases. He glanced up to see that despite her attempts to keep a neutral face, her big brown eyes were nothing but worry.

Taking a deep breath, he quietly admitted, "I think we made a mistake."

He relayed the news of Linnea Charles' apparent abduction, after which Blake simply asked, "Are you going to tell Hotch?"

"I don't think I have much choice," he was already dialing his unit chief's number.

Aaron certainly wasn't pleased with this new development, but his only response was, "It's out of our hands now. Dawson and his team will handle it however they see fit, although if yours and Emily's theory about the kidnapper is right, I hope they won't spook him, for Linnea's sake. Either way, I doubt they'll want our input at this point."

"Agent Eden made it pretty clear that she'd prefer not to hear anything else I had to say on the matter," Rossi admitted.

"Can't blame her," Aaron muttered, and his friend gave a hum of agreement. Then the younger man simply sighed, deep and heavy.

"Get some sleep, Aaron," Dave commanded.

"Shouldn't you be doing the same?"

"I'm old. Old people don't sleep."

Alex Blake gave a small snort of amusement at the quip, but never looked up from the tablet in her lap.

"Tell Blake to get some rest, too." It wasn't surprising that Aaron knew that she was still awake, too.

"We're wrapping up for the night," Dave promised. Now Alex looked up at him, giving a small nod of agreement—they'd both almost finished sorting through their respective lists of potential cases.

"Let me know if anything else happens with Linnea Charles."

"I will."

Blake waited until Dave had hung up before asking, "What did Agent Eden say to you?"

He looked at her in askance, but she knew it was a farce. She'd noted the haunted look in his eyes right before his phone call with the woman had ended. So instead, she pressed further, "There was a moment, when you were on the phone with her. She must have said something that upset you, because there was this...change in you. You looked like you'd been sucker-punched."

This is what I get for letting a profiler into my house, Rossi reminded himself tiredly. He knew he couldn't escape Blake's curiosity or concern, so he met it, "She accused me—all of us, I guess—of trying to prove Reid's innocence at the cost of other innocent lives."

Blake made a face. "That's a pretty heavy accusation to lay at your doorstep."

"Problem is, it might be true," Rossi looked down at his desk, which was covered with notes he'd taken on all the cases he was rifling through. "Prentiss and I could have pressured Mason Charles into being more concerned about his wife's disappearance. We could've put leaned on the local PD, made them take it seriously."

"But you didn't," Blake finished for him.

Rossi gave a small nod.

"And why didn't you?" Blake asked in her teacher-tone, already knowing the answer.

"Because we just weren't sure," Rossi admitted. However, he lacked conviction.

"Because you thought it was the best way to keep Linnea safe. Because you are a seasoned investigator, who has seen this type of scenario play out more times than you'd care to admit. Because you trusted that infamous gut of yours and made the best call at the moment. Because you were boots on the ground, not some arm-chair general looking back with the 20/20 vision of hindsight."

Alex Blake's voice never strayed from its usual soft and serious cadence, but the lines around her dark eyes were set with righteous determination (don't you give out on me now, Rossi).

He smiled softly, knowing that even if he didn't agree with her assessment, he wasn't foolish enough to say so aloud. Instead, he simply said, "I miss you sometimes, you know that?"

She gave a small smile of her own, opening her hands with a flourish, "Well, I'm here now."

"Drinking my good scotch, keeping me from wallowing in self-pity," Rossi found a way to make that sound like a complaint, and his former teammate laughed at his grumpy-old-man act.

"You're welcome," she bowed her head slightly, as if she were bestowing a great honor upon him.

He shook his head and returned to the list of cases. Despite the smile on his face, he couldn't shake the nagging feeling that Judith Eden's words had left behind.

Worse was the nagging suspicion that they were true—and by association, what kind of person that made him.

"I wonder if I've been changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!"
~Lewis Carroll.