A/N Thank you for the 1000 reviews! Stephanie 615 was the 1000th reviewer, so I'll be writing a HP oneshot to her liking! Thank you to HP Geek, Schokokaffee, HPForever, Aphrodite96 and Anon for their reviews too. I have set out a short extra scene to regular reviewers. If you haven't had yours, please PM me or email me.
Enjoy – I'll update on Sunday. You'll recognise some of this...
Where the Blue of the Night
"The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All in tense, deep that-time-only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything. That if you get to the heart of things you find sadness for ever and ever, everywhere; but a beautiful silver sadness, like a Christ face."
- John Fowles
Chapter Forty-Three
Morgan cast a look at Hotch, an unspoken sentence hanging in the air. There were too many what ifs to contemplate, the worse not even being worth considering at that moment in time. They knew it was unlikely that Dan Clark would harm JJ, not at first anyhow, and she had only been gone minutes. Morgan had to keep that thought in his head, ignore the caveman instinct to go and find Clark and then torture him in a way that would make his testicles shrivel and the rest of his body crease in agony. But he couldn't do that, and neither could Will, who was now standing in the doorway, looking impatient and more than a little agitated.
"We will find her," Morgan said. "You know that."
Will nodded. "What's Hotch told you to do?"
"Stay here with Garcia and Lynch and build on what we know about Clark. We need a geographical profile – start identifying properties," Morgan said, trying not to feel pissed that he couldn't go out there himself. But today had exhausted him, and he was meant to be on light duties as it was. He daren't argue with Hotch right now; they were one man down with JJ, and Hotch would not risk Morgan being any further injured. Besides, Morgan was struggling to even walk down the stairs at present.
Will ran his hand through his hair, his eyes dark with the thoughts that were tumbling through his mind. "Will you look after Henry while I go with Hotch?"
Morgan nodded. "If that's okay with the boss-man." He glanced to where Hotch was standing, pulling on the thick waterproof coat that had been left hanging to dry near the kitchen door.
Hotch nodded. "I need you to be law enforcement and not the missing's fiancé," he said, already having depersonalised JJ, meaning he could try to lead this investigation without emotion.
"I can try," Will said. "Tell me what you want me to do, and I'll do it. But I can't sit here."
"Okay. Start by getting your coat. It's still raining out there, and it's cold."
Morgan noticed Emily appear, already dressed for the weather in fatigues and a waterproof coat. Her hair was scraped back and he saw only a minimal amount of make up; clearly time was a priority.
"You'll keep me informed?" he said, looking at Hotch who nodded.
"You'll keep directing Garcia and Lynch where to look?" Will said. "They're good..."
"But they need directing. They're not profilers. I guess Reid gets the action man job for tonight," Morgan said, hearing movement from upstairs.
They would have laughed usually, at the thought of Reid being an action man, but the image only conjured up more spectres of desperation.
"Guys," Morgan heard Garcia's voice from behind him. "I got two more addresses connected to Clark. One's on your way." Morgan tuned out as Garcia relayed the information, noticing her demeanour instead. She was pale, tired and excruciatingly worried. She had Lynch with her, but he was glad he was here too. Garcia could be the strongest of all of them, but sometimes she needed people to scaffold her.
"Ready to go," Hotch said, back to being his man of few words. Will and Prentiss nodded, saying nothing as they left. Morgan just hoped they'd have more to say the next time he heard from them.
...
JJ woke up in a bare room, her head pounding and her mouth as dry as sand. She was tied up, but could feel no signs that she'd been hit in any way. Her captor was sitting in front of her, his eyes smiling. He looked overjoyed, an expression that sent shivers of fear through her.
"You need to let me go," she said, her words trembling. "I need to go home to my little boy."
He shook his head, still smiling. "No," he said. "We'll get Henry some other time, when you're settled. But for now, we need to talk."
He was too calm, too assured. JJ felt herself start to panic. "You owe me some answers."
There was no hint of light even flickering into the room. The one, naked light bulb hung on a long wire from the low ceiling, enough length on it for the heat of the bulb to be used as a weapon.
"I brought you here for answers. When are you going to give me some?"
There was a deep sigh. The coldness of the stone floor seemed to permeate the soles of shoes, sending shivers down spines. Then he began to pace back and forth, each footfall creating a soft noise that seemed malevolent given the circumstances.
"You need to ask me the questions first." It was a technique to buy time. The longer they stalled, the more chance there was of being found by the rest of the team.
He sat down, scraping the wooden chair back slightly, the sound echoing through the room. If it could be called a room. It was more like a large cell; soulless and anonymous. "You already know what the questions are."
"Then there are too many of them." It was surprising that the words came out without a stutter, from the coldness as well as the fear. "You need to tell me where to start."
He looked away, over at the wall, as he had done several times already. There could be some significance to the spot, although there seemed to be nothing out of place there. It would be worth investigating should he ever leave the room for any length of time.
"The beginning," he said. "That's where all stories should be started."
"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."
"What is it that you intend to do?"
He smiled at the question as if he had been expecting it all along. There was nothing urgent now about his demeanour; he was calm, at peace almost, as if everything that needed to be done had been done, and now he could revel in the aftermath of his work. "Think about it," he said. "Think about everything that you have done over the past week. What have you learned?"
She focused on her breathing, making it steady, less panicked. Since she had known he was planning another explosion her outlook had changed. Being calm was now difficult; she was in a situation where she wanted to fight or fly, and fighting certainly wasn't an option. But neither was flying. She had no idea how to get out of there, or even how to create an opportunity to look for a way out. "We have learnt about you," she said. "We know more than you think."
"You know what I wanted you to know. Enough to create fear. Enough so that your mind is now racing with the possibilities of what I've planned. You know that I have a remote control to a bomb somewhere; but you don't know where that bomb is, and you don't know if your colleagues are aware of it. You also don't know if there is a secondary explosive somewhere, because you will have profiled me to be a mission oriented killer, you think that I will kill myself once my mission has been completed." He sat down on the chair facing her, his fingers softly tapping on the wood of the table.
"There's no point me answering your questions," she said, pulling calmness from somewhere. She knew that one bomb had already been found – he wouldn't know that. "Because my answers will always be wrong." She fell silent. She had to use what she knew, what she had learned. She had to buy time.
He nodded. "Very well," he said. "Just remember I know more about you than you do about me. I've been studying you for so long that I know every inch, every crevasse of your soul."
She felt resolve harden in her, letting her eyes become like stone, cold and unreadable. They knew what he wanted his victims to do, and to survive, she was going to have to do anything but.
"Refusing to speak won't help your cause, you know." His voice was calm now, with almost a quiet laugh in his words. "And you haven't even asked what I've done with the other one. That surprises me."
She looked up at him, keeping her expression stony, and hoping that he couldn't tell that her heartbeat had risen at the mention of his first prisoner. They knew she would be unharmed. It wasn't in his profile to kill or hurt someone who posed no threat to his mission. Sophie was just a bargaining piece in this game he was playing, a very calculated bargaining piece.
However, she knew that she wasn't such an object. In the briefest of moments hatred burned in his eyes when he looked at her, the milliseconds when his true emotions flared through the half mad facade he had created. Because he wasn't mad; he was simply angry enough to know longer care what the final outcome of his actions would be, as long as he had completed what he set out to do.
"We know you haven't harmed her. You only attack those that you think have done you wrong. Sophie hasn't done anything," she said, choosing her words carefully, hoping to show him that she thought of him as an equal.
He gave her a smile that made her worry for the girl's safety, and a cold shiver ran through every bone. "We'll have to see how accurate your profile is, won't we, my dear? And just how good your colleagues actually are. Something tells me that they might not be as good as you think."
She wondered what he would do later. There was no doubt in her mind that he wasn't going to bring her food or water. She was one of the ones on whom he wanted revenge, possibly the one he wanted the most. For a moment she felt scared for her safety, a feeling she had so far managed to ward off. She was one of his obsessions, one of his desires, part of a fantasy that would never be realised. So far, concern for the rest of the team had been at the forefront of her mind, but now the silence and his continual presence were beginning to wear her down. This was part of his strategy – she pulled words from the profile – he wanted to break them down, using their weaknesses, their fears. He sought his victims when they were at their weakest, toying with them like a hunter with its prey.
A chuckle broke the silence. She looked over at him, waiting for him to speak, but he didn't. Instead he just sat there, smiling at her knowingly, toying with the detonator in his hands, the device that could kill someone somewhere else. She tried to will her fear to strength, willing herself to be calm. How could she talk him out of leaving the room? He would have to go at some point, to the bathroom, or to get food.
The thought of the bathroom made her back ache. There was no provision for her. Luckily, she'd not eaten much in the past twenty four hours, but her kidneys were now aching slightly and she knew an infection was imminent. This was another way of making her suffer, another way of him taking his revenge.
His cell phone rang, surprising both of them. He studied the screen before answering, checking to see who was calling.
"Hi, honey," he said. "No, I haven't forgotten about dinner with your mom. I'll be back soon. It's been a busy day. Yeah, I know, they're all busy days." There was a pause then a laugh. "I'll see you in fifteen minutes, sweetheart. Yeah, you too."
He put the phone away in his jacket pocket then stood up, giving her a smile. "I guess duty calls," he said. "I'll see you in the morning – maybe." He ambled to the door, its weight screaming as he pulled it open. She wondered if she could overpower him when he came back later, or in the morning, but it was doubtful. Even if she could break free of the ropes, he'd threaten her with detonating the alleged bomb if she approached him.
The alleged bomb. There was a chance the team had found the rest of them already. There was a chance it wasn't real, that it was simply a threat, like the many he'd already made. But she couldn't take that chance.
Or could she – if it meant she could get out of there?
...
"They've found Alfie Fletcher," Emily said, ending the call. "He's being taken to hospital – it doesn't look good for him."
Hotch heard a shake in her voice that worried him. "He'll get good care, Emily. But for now, as callous as it sounds, we can't think about him." He hated how his words sounded, cold and unemotional, but the boy had been found and there was nothing more they could do for him; that was down to the doctors and nurses at the hospital.
The house they were heading to had most of its lights switched on, the glow a welcoming sight in the early hours of a cold and wet morning. It was now past three am, and they had hit the time when the body was at its lowest ebb.
"If you were holding someone – or some people – captive in a house, you wouldn't have it lit up like Disneyworld, would you?" Emily said, a little bit of her usual humour easing through.
Hotch thought for a moment, then agreed. "It's unlikely. But we still need to check," he said, stopping the car in front of the house.
He was out first, Emily behind him, Will staying in the car. They'd agreed on the way there that he'd wait in the vehicle, only coming over if necessary. Hotch knocked hard on the door, music playing at a level that reminded him of what it was like to have a ruptured eardrum.
Eventually, a fair haired man of around Reid's age answered, his eyes glassy, his nose red around the nostrils.
"You know this man?" Hotch showed him a picture of Dan Clark before getting out his badge. He doubted there would be any point.
"Yeah, man, he's my landlord. He owns this place and I like, pay him rent," the drone said.
"That would be what a landlord is," Emily said, showing her badge. The drone looked a little taken back. "Have you seen him in the past three days?"
He shook his head. "Saw him two months ago when he came to look at our boiler. He saw it was broke, then got someone to come fix it. Nothing since then. I guess as long as he gets his rent on time, he doesn't really care what his tenants get up to."
"Clearly," Emily said. She backed away.
"Thank you for your time," Hotch said, following her. The door was shut without animosity, followed shortly by an increase in volume.
"She's not there, Aaron," Emily said, the use of his first name making him want to hold her again. Maybe that was the key; to keep using surnames when they were working.
"I agree. But we had to try." They walked back to the car, Will looking more and more dejected with each step they took closer.
There were no stars out tonight, he noticed. No stars and no moon. No light.
As if that had been taken as well.