Thank you for the reviews, and the messages about my grandfather. He has a burst stomach ulcer, but other than that is as grouchy as ever – back to normal then!

I haven't had chance to do replies, it is another of those weeks where everything goes to pot, so instead of replying to individual reviews, I'll send a short chapter (that may not be in the time frame of this story – it might be something independent instead) to those that have reviewed each chapter so far and review this and chapter three.

Your comments so far have been very interesting and I have really enjoyed reading them – keep them coming!

Chapter three may be up on Thursday or Friday; it's almost finished, but I have a report to write tonight, so the pressures on my amazing beta Chiroho and I'd rather not rush him, as he really does do a marvellous job! If you want to say a thank you to him, do pop by and read his stories; they're light relief compared to mine, and drop him a review!

I am off work next week and the week after, so I will get in the swing of updating Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday again, and hopefully start replying to reviews individually again, as well as a calorie free 'treat' for regular reviewers! (Don't expect anything huge – it'll be around 1000 words).

Thanks for being understanding!

Sarah x

Where the Blue of the Night

"There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes."

- Milan Kundera

Chapter Two

November 11th

"Tell me about yourself."

Taking control of the conversation seemed the right thing to do. The glint of something metallic sat eye-catchingly in his pocket, but it didn't look like a gun.

"What do you want to know?" he said, pacing from one side of the room to the other.

"Why you're doing this." It was almost impossible to keep a tremble out of the words.

"If you start at the beginning, you'll know why." The power began to shift.

Realisation began to kick in. They were in a place that was completely unknown, out of the way and secluded. There'd been a brief glimpse of it when the car door had been opened and he'd needed to remove the blindfold, but that was all.

"Before I start," the tremble was back in full force this time. "Can you tell me what is in your pocket?"

"Yes, I can tell you." He looked pleased that the question had been asked. "I take it your rather inane question means you want to know what it is? He smiled, showing a line of perfectly white teeth that were probably the result of expensive dentistry. It wouldn't have been a surprise if the work had been done while he had been an adult. "It's a remote control."

"For a bomb?" Fear breathed fire through veins, the ties that bound limbs to the chair pulled at in frustration.

"Yes. For a bomb."

November 4th

There was no sign of the dawn as the car quietly raced towards Roanoke General Hospital. The original rush of adrenaline had left behind nerves and exhaustion, a fuel that Emily knew she could only run on for so long before she'd have to retreat to find energy from somewhere.

Only now there was no safe retreat.

"Shall I call the rest of the team?" she said, the sound of her voice strange against the silence.

Hotch shook his head. "It's not for me to make that decision," he said. "I do need to call Strauss if she isn't already aware of what's happened." His jaw was tight, his forehead creased with concern.

Emily tried to sink back into the seat, but found she couldn't. Her heart was still beating too fast, and her body felt as if she had just ran a marathon; racked with an ache that only a witches' brew of emotions could create.

"You'll need to get some rest later," Hotch said, his tone now that of a superior. "I'll have someone check both of our apartments, and then I'll take you back home after we've been to the hospital."

She nodded, knowing that it would be pointless to argue, even if she wanted to. "We won't be able to work this case," she said to him. "You know that. It'll be passed on to Agent Mansfield and his team."

"We'll still be asked to work it unofficially, from the office," he said, braking as a fox ran across the road. "The fastest way to catch the bomber is to profile him. Working victimology will be easy seeing as the victim is one of us."

"And potentially damaging," she said, her mind racing with the implications of what was going to happen. "We'll all have to open up our pasts. That's not going to be easy, Hotch: the last few days have shown how hard it is for some of us to deal with our current situations."

Lights in the distance signified that they were approaching the hospital, the roads made quiet by night giving them a quick journey. Emily rubbed at her eyes, feeling their dryness. It was just past four in the morning, and her body and mind were longing for sleep, only the dread in the pit of her stomach was preventing that from happening anytime soon.

"It will be easier for some than others," Hotch said. She could see that his thoughts were now elsewhere, his mind racing to cope with the news they had received just forty five minutes ago. "But this will be repeated if we don't find the UnSub soon, and the next time it could be far more damaging than a few broken windows and shrapnel wounds."

"There's no chance this was random – no sign of a prank or a mistaken identity?" She was trying to persuade herself more than Hotch. The likelihood of it being so was minimal. There was no way the UnSub had got the wrong address.

Hotch shook his head. "No. This is a direct attack," Hotch said, following it with a loud sigh. "We should be having a good week or so off. Now everyone needs to be contacted and will have to be at Quantico tomorrow."

"What about Morgan?" Emily said, remembering Hotch's schedule for the day.

Hotch shrugged. "He's still part of the team. This affects him as much as any of us."

"So you think it's an attack on the team, rather than an individual?" Her mind was jumping; sleep deprivation ceasing any linear thought.

"We can't rule anything out." He pulled into a parking spot in front of the hospital, staring straight ahead at the darkened building. Lights in the windows glowed, but they did not provide warmth. Instead they reminded Emily of a Siren's call, summoning men to a place of death. Hospitals at night always seemed eerie, as if the eyes of unknown ghosts watched from darkened windows, looking for new people to join them.

Emily tried to shrug off the sense of impending doom that had been flying in from a distance since they left Utah, and had now landed. "We should go in, Aaron," she said, turning to him. "We're going to need to persuade him to stay overnight, if he hasn't already discharged himself."

"That's easier said than done," Hotch said, undoing his seatbelt. "Mules have nothing on him."

The lobby was quiet; the dead hours of the early morning empty of the usual movement that the daytime and the evening brought. Two women in their thirties or forties sat behind computer monitors, neither looking up as Hotch and Emily approached; their attention elsewhere. It was an almost out-of-body experience; the sound of her heels clicking on the hard floor appeared to come from elsewhere, and Emily felt as if she was watching a strange TV program; an observer rather than participant. She knew it was due to exhaustion and adrenaline, an odd combination that her body no longer wanted to be fuelled by, but she also knew that she had to get through the next couple of hours. Somehow.

"We're here to see David Rossi," Hotch said, the words surreal. "He's expecting us."

The blonde receptionist looked up, giving them a smile that was practised rather than sincere. "He's in room 375, that's on the third floor."

"Thank you." He glanced at Emily, maintaining the look as they walked towards the elevator. "Are you okay?"

The words didn't really register, they kind of bounced off a protective boundary that she'd built, a wall that was blocking off her feelings.

"I'm fine," she said, knowing it was a lie, and that he'd be able to see straight through it. But did she want anything other than that?

"You're not," he said, checking his messages as he spoke. "You're exhausted, and if you don't sleep properly soon, you're going to end up getting sick."

Emily entered the elevator and leaned against the metal wall. "You're right," she said. "I am. And then I'll be no use to you or whatever investigation is going to happen. Shit, Hotch! How are we going to do this?" The confession lifted some weight off her shoulders, but not all of it. There was no daylight glowing at the end of any tunnel at present; the light had been well and truly extinguished.

"I don't know," he said, and the words surprised her. He usually knew everything, or so it seemed. "I don't know what's going to happen, or how we will deal with it on such little rest, but we'll have to. We need to look at it as we do any other case. And we will get to the bottom of it." She saw the appraising look he gave her. "Let's see Dave, then take you home."

She felt a shot of worry shimmy through her. "My apartment..."

"Is being checked as we speak," he said. "I've also had a message to confirm that the exterior of JJ's, Reid's and Morgan's places are all okay. There are no signs of suspicious activity and the people checking have seen enough to suggest nothing abnormal has happened."

"Shouldn't we wake them? Have someone go through – we don't know if this is just an attack on Rossi or all of us?" Concern bubbled, overwhelming.

"I don't know," he said. "It's not really my call."

Elevator doors slid open, letting the false fluorescent light of the hospital corridors blind them. She followed Hotch without thought, trusting him to lead them to Ross's room. The feeling of being out of control was not enjoyable, but she was too tired to fight it, too tired to take control of herself; and as Hotch's hand slipped onto the small of her back she knew he realised that.

The door to room 375 was open, no privacy needed. Emily saw Rossi's face first, a jagged cut emblazoning his right cheek. He was staring at the wall in front of them, deliberately oblivious to their presence. She wondered what he was thinking, how far back in his past he had gone, searching for a reason why someone would do this to him.

"It wasn't meant to kill," he said as they entered. "It was meant to scare."

Hotch pulled a chair slightly away from the bed for her to sit on.

"That's why I don't think I'm the only target," Rossi turned his head and looked at them. "A few days ago, I saw Agent Mansfield in Garcia's office. She denied it was him, but she's never become good enough at lying to get away with it, and I wondered if a threat had been made against one, or all, of us, and Mansfield was investigating."

"Have you called her?" Hotch said, still standing, his posture tense. "Was a threat made?"

Rossi shook his head. "I don't know. I haven't tried to contact her. I figured Agent Mansfield would get in touch with her and the rest of the team, but he hasn't even been here yet."

"He's on vacation," Hotch said. "And no one's been able to get in touch with him."

"He goes fishing. They'll be no cell phone reception. Does Strauss know?" Rossi said.

Hotch nodded. "I'm expecting a call from her to say when she intends to inform everyone."

"There have been no other attacks?" Rossi said. Emily now noticed his tone of voice: it was flat. Gone was any emotion or urgency, the words were devoid of any emotion.

"None that we know of. What happened, Dave?" Hotch said.

There was silence, an empty noise. It lingered like the smell of antiseptic even after Rossi started to speak.

"I got home, parked the car in the garage, and as I unlocked the front door I heard a loud noise and found myself being knocked over by the force of an explosion. The windows blew out, and the door came off its hinges, and for a moment, I thought everything was over. Then when I came to, I realised that wasn't it, that I was still alive and breathing, and would have a hell of a lot of cleaning up to do. There was no intent to kill me. This is a taunt, Aaron. A threat."

Emily saw Hotch nod. They were beginning to profile already. "The house has been secured, and there will be crime scene techs and officers there all night. I've asked them to preserve everything until morning," Hotch said. "We need a clear head on this one."

"Then go home," Rossi said, seeming to be more alert now. "Go and get some rest. I'm not going anywhere for tonight. I need to sleep and look at this again in the morning. You stayed at Emily's, right?"

Hotch's cell vibrated loudly. He pulled it out of his pocket and left the room. One word responses could be heard that gave away nothing. Emily exchanged a look with Rossi, and gave a sigh that told of her realisation. He'd had his own apartment checked out.

Footsteps echoed, filling the silence as he came back into the room. Hotch's face was drawn and grim. "There was another explosive," he said. "At my apartment. It's not an attack on you, Dave. This is on all of us. It's about the BAU."

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