what you leave behind

THE EMTS ARRIVE FIRST. Jane can hear the sirens echo through the night and her head falls back against the bed in relief.

They find them quickly in the back bedroom, all of them their own bloody mess. Jane clears her throat, pointing towards Kristin and Derek. "32 year old female, was beaten and repeatedly assaulted. Her pulse is low, and she's got blood in her lungs. She needs oxygen, and– and a rape kit,"

Two of the paramedics nod and hurry over to Kristin, one of them ordering a stretcher for transport.

She points at Derek, the man propped up against the footboard of the bed with a distant glare on his face. "He's got a head injury. He might need stitches, and he definitely needs to be monitored for a concussion."

"Jane, I'm not going to the hospital,"

"Derek,"

"I am not going to the hospital when Ellie's still out there," He says lowly, looking at her with that hollow, pleading look.

Swallowing roughly, she nods. "Just– just check him out and clean him up. Make sure he doesn't have any internal bleeding," She hesitates, hands still clutching onto Matt's body halfway in her lap. She waits until Kristin's been loaded onto the stretcher and wheeled out of the bedroom before she makes any move to speak again. "35 year old male, GSW to the heart. Time of death... time of death, 10:24 p.m."

"We'll have to take him to the hospital anyway," One of the EMTs says, earning a nod from Jane.

"I know, but– wait until his sister is gone, okay? She doesn't need to see him like this,"

They share a knowing look but nod, their attention shifting to Jane herself. "Are you hurt?"

She shakes her head. "No, it's– it's not my blood, I'm fine," She shifts, helping them lay Matt out on the floor so she can stand.

She follows one of the EMTs out into the dining room where Derek's seated, the wound on his forehead being swiped at with a sterile wipe. Jane practically falls into the chair beside him, shivers traveling through her body every few seconds despite the fact that it's 100 degrees outside.

A man in a suit walks up to them, and Jane knows he's one of the cops that came as backup. "Where's Detective Spicer?"

Jane's eyes drift to the hallway. "He's gone,"

The man's face shifts, a flash of grief shining in his eyes. "How?"

"The unsub shot him," Derek grunts, glaring past the man at a spot on the wall that would likely be on fire if such a thing were possible. "Point blank."

The detective sighs, wiping a hand over his face. His eyes snap to the doorway and Jane's breath hitches in her throat when Detective Kurzbard walks into the house.

"Spicer?" He asks immediately.

The detective they just spoke to shakes his head slowly. "Kurz, we got here as fast as we could,"

A noise punches out of the man's chest and he shakes his head to rid himself of the distracting grief. "What about Kristin?"

"She was beaten and sexually assaulted," He informs the man, having already spoken to an EMT on his way inside the house. "She's out in the ambulance. And you already know the bad guy took Ellie with him,"

Jane drops her head into her hands, the drying blood scraping across her forehead as she presses her fingers into her temples. Her leg bounces uncontrollably, rattling her whole body. She can't tell if that's what's making her shake or if it's the chills wracking her figure.

"One more thing– there was another couple murdered a mile from here an hour ago. We've got a team there, but we're pretty sure it was the same guy."

Detective Kurzbard doesn't acknowledge anything the man says, instead focusing on his partner. "Where's Matt?"

The other officer ducks his head in a nod, gesturing for Kurzbard to follow him.

Derek winces beside her and Jane snaps her head over to scan him for any worsening injuries.

"Damn it, just– just put a bandage on it and leave me alone,"

Rossi, Emily, and Hotch round the corner into the dining table, their eyes roaming over their two agents closely. Hotch takes a step towards Jane but she shakes her head, avoiding his gaze.

Hotch seems to understand that it means she's not injured and she absolutely doesn't want to talk about anything right now, so he turns his attention to Derek and the paramedic kneeling before him. "How is he?"

"It's nothing, Hotch,"

"He needs a CAT scan, some stitches, and a lot of rest," The EMT says flatly.

"She's right, Morgan,"

Derek retorts sharply before Jane can. "Guys, I'm not going to any hospital until we find that little girl. Now, please," He turns his head back to the paramedic. "Just put a bandage on it."

The woman rolls her eyes slightly, but does as told, and Hotch takes the moment to distract Morgan from the anger obviously bubbling over inside him. "Morgan, what's the notebook?"

"I asked the sister to tell me everything she could remember about the unsub," He says, holding the small notepad up for Hotch to take.

"And what's her condition?"

Jane sighs quietly, drawing eyes her way. "She was assaulted repeatedly. Took blows to the face and stomach, and has a lung that's potentially collapsing. She was coughing up blood and couldn't breathe by the time the ambulance got here."

Emily grimaces, stepping away. "I'll go check on her,"

"What about you?" Rossi says, looking pointedly at Jane. "Are you hurt?"

"No," She practically whispers, voice sluggish. "He didn't even know I was here. I was in the car when I heard the gunshot and I– I grabbed Matt's pistol out of his car and came inside. I– he walked right past me,"

Her voice breaks slightly and she leans forward, pushing out a rough breath. "I heard Ellie crying and he laughed, and I just– I just hid,"

"Jane,"

"I had a gun, I could've– I could've done something," She shakes her head, looking up to meet Hotch's gaze. "I should've stopped him, but I didn't. And now Matt's dead, and Ellie's gone,"

She doesn't meet Derek's gaze despite feeling his eyes on her. She just covers the bottom half of her face with her hands and bites back more tears, her eyes raw from the ones she'd shed earlier.

JJ and Reid walk in before Rossi or anyone else can offer her comfort, and they look her and Derek over with wide eyes.

"Morgan," JJ starts, immediately cut off by the man.

"I'm alright. We're alright," He groans quietly.

"You don't look alright," Reid says, eyes darting between him and Jane.

"Reid," Morgan says sternly, glaring. "Drop it."

Reid purses his lips, taking a small step back. "Sorry,"

JJ reluctantly shifts the attention away from Morgan, looking towards Rossi and Hotch instead. "The local bureau office found us these satellite phones. It should bypass any outage problems on the ground,"

"Good," Hotch nods, eyeing the clunky phones JJ sets on the table.

"Any word on Ellie?"

Morgan looks up at JJ, his gaze dark and almost accusatory as he steps past her, storming out of the house with as much energy as he can muster.

JJ looks at Hotch, eyes wide at the hostile, non-answer. "I was just–"

"It's not you," Hotch reassures her, quickly following Morgan out of the house.

A tense silence follows in his wake before Rossi turns to Jane, gesturing for the door. "Let's get you back to the station and get you a change of clothes,"

She nods silently and stands on unstable legs, walking past him to head to the door. She stumbles on a chair pulled out halfway, but before she can even react, sturdy hands stabilize her. She snaps her head up, eyes wide as she meets Spencer's gaze.

Her hand instinctively came up to wrap around his arm when he caught her, and she squeezes his arm through the fabric of his shirt she's currently staining. "Thanks," She breathes out, chest heaving as her stomach turns the longer he looks into her eyes, feeling like he's looking right through her and can see every single dark crevice and corner of herself that she tries to hide.

Pulling out of his grip, she very nearly stumbles again in her haste to put distance between them, feeling caught out and tired and absolutely defeated. She shakes her head in an attempt to ignore the new mark on Spencer's shirt and tries to tell herself that she doesn't leave blood stains everywhere she goes, on everyone she touches. But when she steps out of the house, she's greeted with flashing sirens that blind her in the darkness.

Standing on the front porch step, covered in blood all the way down her front, Jane feels 12 years old again. She feels like she's just held a gun to her father's face and pulled the trigger and held her mother's lifeless, bloodied body while he slowly died beside them, looking at her with eyes full of regret even as the light went out behind them. She remembers thinking– knowing– that it wasn't regret for what he'd done to get them to that point, but regret in Jane. In Maeve. In Ruth. He regretted them all, hated them until his very last breath. She'd known it like it was the air she breathed.

She remembers that even then she hadn't thought twice about what she'd done. It was the right thing to do. She didn't have the foresight to know how long that night would haunt her. She couldn't have known what it would do to her.

Even still, she doesn't know what's coming for her.

──────

"Alright, what we have is an unsub in complete behavioral chaos," Hotch addresses the room at large as they all file into the conference room, Jane and Morgan remaining behind everyone.

Jane wraps her arms around herself, feeling bare in one of JJ's spare t-shirts she'd brought. She drops her gaze to the floor, listening to them talk as her mind races.

"What do you mean?"

"Serial offenders, especially long-term, successful ones, don't just suddenly change what they do or how they do it."

"Going after a high-risk target like a police detective and then all of a sudden abducting a child is fairly unheard of," Spencer says, his face twisted in that familiar look of contemplation that means he's running through millions of scenarios in his head.

Detective Kurzbard raises a brow at his wording. "Fairly?"

"Sometimes, they devolve as they know we're getting closer to them and their time is running out," Hotch supplies the man with an answer, earning a nod.

Derek shifts, his voice grave when he speaks up. "But this unsub doesn't appear to be devolving. Devolution generally means loss of control, they find it harder and harder to keep the outside world from noticing them,"

The frustration that grows in his voice doesn't go unnoticed by the team, but they don't address it, knowing they were walking on a tightrope with his temper already. Derek could usually be levelheaded, if not a little quick to anger with these situations, but he rarely let it get in the way of the job itself. This case, though, seemed to be getting rapidly personal for him and Jane, especially in the wake of Spicer's death and Ellie's abduction.

"I think he's becoming more controlled. He spent a lifetime murdering seemingly random victims, then out of nowhere, sought out Spicer, recreated his parents' murder, lured him into a trap, killed him and took his daughter," Spencer's voice takes on an almost questioning tone, his confusion obvious on his face. "The behavioral spectrum is alarmingly different."

Before anyone can add to what Spencer said, Morgan's satellite phone rings and he answers it quickly.

"Yeah, Garcia?"

There's a brief moment where Derek appears calm before his voice echoes loudly, a sharpness to it that makes Jane flinch.

"Sorry's not helping anybody. I need results." He hangs up on the woman abruptly, and Jane glances at her side, meeting JJ's concerned look for a moment. The blonde wasn't the only one in the room sporting one, either. "Garcia's got nothing on the partial plate."

Rossi shakes his head slightly, eyeing Derek. "Maybe Kristin's wrong. It's not surprising, considering her situation at the time."

"So, how the hell are we supposed to find this guy?"

Emily walks into the room behind Derek, catching the tail end of his question. "We can contact him,"

Hotch looked at her inquisitively. "What do you mean?"

"Kristin remembered in the ambulance that the unsub listens to news radio incessantly. He would even stop assaulting her if the broadcaster said anything about the Prince of Darkness,"

"Makes sense for a narcissist."

"Oh, no," JJ says, her voice low but not unheard as they all turn to face her.

"What is it?"

"The LAPD just put all the information they have out to the press,"

Derek looks at her with furrowed brows. "What do you mean?"

"A spokesperson at the crime scene was talking about the RV and about Ellie," Spencer recalls, a wary look crossing his face.

"So, this guy knows exactly what we know,"

"That might force him to dump the RV,"

"Or kill–" Spencer cuts himself off, glancing at Morgan apologetically.

Rossi quickly shakes his head, a purposeful point of confidence in his voice. "No. I don't think so,"

Jane speaks up from where she stands at the back of the room, curled in on herself. "You don't think he'd kill Ellie?"

Rossi takes a seat, glancing towards Jane with another shake of his head. "He could've killed Morgan and Kristin, but he didn't. He could've killed Jane, too, if he'd known to look. But he kept you alive. He can't be surprised that we know what he's driving and that he has a hostage,"

"But how many news radio stations are there in Los Angeles?"

Detective Kurzbard shrugs a shoulder. "I don't know, 20 or so,"

"We can't just guess which one he listens to," Hotch says.

"What about the Emergency Alert System?" JJ suggests, face set in something serious. "It would be a way to communicate over all the stations simultaneously."

"How do we do that?"

JJ shrugs. "Uh, I don't really know. How hard could it be to work out?"

She dismisses herself on that note, heading into the bullpen to get her phone and start on the best new lead they have.

──────

There's a picture of Ellie on Spicer's desk. There's two, actually, but Jane's just looking at the one. He's got his arms around her and he's smiling so wide it looks like it hurts, even in the freeze frame of the picture. Ellie's laughing, too, head thrown back and face somewhat blurry that shows she was moving as the picture was taken.

There's a shadow of a thumb in the top corner of the picture, and Jane's stomach turns and her heart pangs in her chest, because it's nowhere near the perfect photo. She's sure Spicer had years of school pictures, baby pictures, anything to showcase Ellie, but he chose this blurry, nearly-ruined photo to sit on his desk for everyone to see because it didn't need to be perfect to display the love he had for his daughter.

And now he's gone. All of that love is gone. Or– it's still here, but because Matt isn't here to express it and Ellie's in the clutches of a psychotic serial killer, it's got nowhere to go. It's sitting stagnant in the air like humidity in the south, sticking to skin, pulling tight around Jane's throat, cutting her breaths short.

She digs her fingernails into her arms, gritting her teeth at the thin, white scar tissue littering her arms. She can't press too hard on her scars because they'll start to hurt, and when one begins to hurt, it sends a message to every other one on her body and she can hardly get out of bed on those days. She wants to drag her nails down her arms and pull her skin off of her body right now. She wants it off of her, wants something new, something that hasn't been touched. Ruined. Wants a body she feels safe in.

"Jane,"

She doesn't startle at the sound of Hotch's voice behind her, having seen his reflection in the glass in front of her minutes ago. She'd wondered how long he was going to let her wallow in her misery, staring at the picture of Matt and Ellie sitting on his desk that wouldn't even be able to collect dust in his absence because they'd be cleaning it off sooner than later.

That's one of the more painful things about death, Jane thinks. Watching the pieces of someone slowly disappear. It seems like one day you make a promise to never forget someone, and the next thing you know their clothes are in boxes and you can't remember the sound of their voice.

The forgetting is the worst part.

She turns to look at Hotch, can't stand the way her skin crawls with him standing at her back, and she knows he sees every inch of her misery on her face the second she meets his eyes.

"I can't have this conversation right now," She says quietly.

Hotch doesn't have to be a profiler to see the fear in her eyes when she tells him that, like she thinks he's going to be disappointed in her. "That's alright. Are you capable of continuing to work on this case? Or do you want to go back to the hotel?"

She doesn't answer right away and he's grateful. Because he wants her to think about it, wants her to think about her own wellbeing for once, and not just sacrifice her state of mind for the sake of this job. He sees what it does to people. He knows what it's done to himself. He won't let Jane do it, no matter how hard she tries.

"I want to stay," She says finally, nodding to herself. "But I– I can't go back out in the field right now."

"That's fine," He's quick to reassure her, because he knows how her brain works despite all the secrets she manages to keep from him. "Jane... you've done your best."

"It wasn't enough though, was it?"

"I don't think anything could've stopped this unsub," Hotch shakes his head, a hint of frustration in his voice alongside the exhaustion from this grueling case. None of them are easy, but there are certainly ones that are harder. "I don't know what's going to stop him. He's... unpredictable at best. A wildcard. Those are dangerous."

Jane nods, clenching her jaw to try to steady the way her body quivered. "Do you think Ellie is going to be okay?"

Hotch hesitates for a moment, resenting the fact that he has to give Jane the same empty platitudes he gives to people on cases. He doesn't like that he doesn't have answers for her, and that he can't comfort her the way that instinct drives him to want to. He wishes he could call Chief Strauss and tell her that Jane needed to go back to her lab full time, that she didn't belong with the BAU, but it'd be a lie. It would be selfish of him to do it, because he's seen the way Jane is with his team. She's a good fit– a perfect fit. He always knew she would be. But he still hasn't been able to see past the bump in the road that has always been there when it comes to her; the fact that she's his kid.

And he can argue with himself about the logistics of it all day, the fact that she's not his biological child and he shouldn't be so protective of her because she's a grown woman, but it doesn't erase the life they've spent together. Second to Haley, she's known him longer than anyone else in his life.

So he wants to look at her and promise her everything will be alright and they'll find Ellie completely unharmed, and she'll be able to live with her aunt and grow up with some semblance of stability after the earth-shattering things she'd seen these past few days. But he can't.

"I don't know,"

He hates the fact that his job has to come first before his family right now. Because he can see the look in her eyes that said she'd been hoping just as he had that he didn't have to lie to her about this.

"A boy just woke up his neighbors," Detective Kurzbard's voice calls out through the bullpen, drawing Hotch and Jane's attention away from their empty conversation. "Said he escaped from the Prince of Darkness."

Hotch's frown deepens. "What?"

"He said they're still in his house right now."

Derek narrows his eyes, tilting his head. "They?"

The Detective nods slightly. "There's a girl with him."

Hotch turns to look at Jane, giving her an apologetic look. "Stay here. Have a unit take you back to the hotel if you need to leave."

Jane nods dutifully, watching him follow after Derek and Detective Kurzbard, and a long sigh leaves her.

She turns to head for the conference room, and her eyes catch on the picture of Matt and Ellie once more.

Grief rolls through her like a tidal wave and she shakes her head, trying her best to get rid of that harrowing feeling.

──────

"He was a great cop," One of the officers, Ray, says with a distant smile on his face as Jane listens intently. "Good at his job. He never let it get to his head– all the attention. He just did the job, and then went home to Ellie."

Jane rests her chin on her hand, smiling fondly. "He really loved her, huh?"

"Oh, yeah," Ray chuckled. "She was his whole world. Well, her and his sister. They were two peas in a pod. 'Course, Matt hardly let her out of his sight after her whole thing with her ex-boyfriend."

Jane's smile faltered and her brows twitched inquisitively. "What, uh, what happened with her ex-boyfriend?"

"He was a real piece of work," Ray scoffs. "She's still got a restraining order against him, but I don't doubt Matt pulled a lot of strings to keep it up all these years. He was just another one of those guys that thought they ruled the world, you know? Kristin wouldn't tell Matt anything about him for the longest time, since he always ran her boyfriends off with the cop thing to begin with, but she thought this one was gonna last so she caved eventually. Matt ran a background check on him first thing, only to find out he had to prior assault charges for battery against his spouses. Guy couldn't keep his hands off women."

Jane's fingers twitched against the table and she let out a quiet, shaky breath. "Oh, that's... that's horrible. What– what did Matt do?"

"He told Kristin about it immediately, but she wouldn't listen to him. Kept telling Spicer he'd been to rehab, to all the classes for anger management and he was better now. It didn't take long for that to bite her in the ass, of course. It only took the one split lip for Matt to put an end to it, and he went to their house to get Kristin's stuff and the next day there was a restraining order against him to keep him away from Kristin."

The tips of Jane's fingers turn white with the pressure as she pushes them against the conference table. "That white knight thing just came naturally to him, didn't it?"

Ray laughs a bit, nodding as Jane forces a smile again. "He couldn't help himself. He always said he became a cop for Ellie, 'cause he wanted her to grow up in a world where stuff like that didn't happen."

The fond smile falls off of Ray's face, overtaken by a grief-stricken look. "I... I can't imagine what he'd think about this whole situation. He'd be tearing this place apart trying to get her back."

"He was," Jane blurts out, shaking her head. "He– he already was. When Agent Morgan and I went with him to go after Ellie and Kristin, I mean, the second we even thought that's where this unsub was headed, he had tunnel vision. He just wanted to catch this guy."

"Sounds like Spicer,"

"I–" Jane hesitates. "I know I hardly knew him compared to you guys, but I'm... I'm really sorry. He was a wonderful person. And, uh, I know I probably shouldn't do this, but we're going to get Ellie back. I– I promise. My team won't give up on her."

The smile slowly returns to Ray's face and Jane looks away from him, away from the vulnerability pulling at her, just in time to see a deputy walk into the conference room and head for the radio on the shelf.

"Your girl's on the EAS," The man informs them, looking at Jane pointedly. "Talking to this guy."

Jane sits up, her attention falling to the radio as the officer turns it up for them to hear.

"Billy Flynn? Mr. Flynn, I– I don't know for sure that you can hear me, but my– my name is Jennifer Jareau," JJ's voice comes through the slightly grainy speaker, the electronics still somewhat hazy after the long blackout that lasted well into the morning. "I work for the FBI as a communications liaison for the– the Behavioral, uh– okay,"

JJ stops, a hint of frustration in her tone that has Jane's brows twitching with worry.

"Mr. Flynn, I– I want to talk to you about letting Ellie Spicer go. I mean– I want to ask you to. See, I'm not a hostage negotiator, uh, I've never done anything like this at all– ever– but, um, sometimes circumstances, it's..."

JJ trails off again and Ray looks at Jane dubiously. "Your boss picked her for this?"

Jane purses her lips, nodding. "JJ's good at her job. Hotch wouldn't let her do this if he didn't think she could."

"You can tell I'm not a hostage negotiator. But I am a mother. And I... I know what your mother did to you when you were little. What she was. What she made you watch, what she let men do to you. And it makes me so– it's just not fair. And no one– no one can make that better. I wish I could, I do, but if I– if I could somehow go back there and, you know, make what was happening to you stop, if I could just... you know, pick you up and just tell you that it'll all be okay. That's what moms are supposed to do. They're not supposed to be the cause of your pain, they're supposed to make it go away. They're supposed to hold you and tell you everything is gonna be alright. They're supposed to tell you that thunder is angels bowling and that it's okay to be afraid of the dark and that it's not silly to think there might be monsters in your closet and it's okay if you want to climb into bed with them just this once, 'cause it's scary in the room all alone. They're supposed to say it's okay to be afraid and not be the thing you're afraid of."

JJ heaves a sigh, and Jane can hear the shake of her head through the speaker. "But most importantly, they're supposed to love you no matter what. What happened to you isn't fair, it's not right, but, um... I'm supposed to empathize with you. Sympathize. Understand. But I can't. That– that would be a lie. The truth is, I don't understand what you've done. I don't sympathize with you killing people all these years. And I especially don't understand you taking Ellie. What I can do is tell you what a mother should tell you, that you can't take away your pain by hurting someone else. That it doesn't make all the nights you went to bed scared and alone any better if you scare someone else the way you're scaring Ellie. What happened to you, it isn't fair. But what you're doing to her isn't fair either, and if anyone should understand what that feels like, it's you."

There's a poignant silence after JJ's irritation boils over and Jane knows she's collecting herself before she continues.

"You have the power. You can do what you want to do. But for once, you can choose to use that power to do for Ellie what should have been done for you. You can choose letting her go. You can choose teaching her that, yes, there are monsters and it's okay to be afraid of them. But it's not okay to let them win. And it's not okay to be one."

Static rings out in the silence before it flicks off, and the regular morning weather broadcast continues like it hadn't stopped, and the officer is turning the radio off again.

Ray heaves a tired sigh, looking between the officer and Jane. "You think that worked?"

Jane glances at her phone laying face-up on the table near her hand and holds her breath as it sits plainly for a prolonged minute that feels like it lasts an hour.

Her phone lights up and Jane reaches for it before it finishes vibrating as she opens the text from Emily.

The small flicker of hope she'd allowed to spark inside of her dies out quickly at the news. "The hospital called," She says gravely to the room. "Kristin's lungs collapsed and she passed away a few minutes ago."

There's a murmur of grief that ripples through them but it's interrupted by a desk phone ringing. An officer hurries over, answering it briskly.

"Kurzbard? Wh– really? Okay. Okay, we're sending squad cars out now," The officer puts the phone down, turning to look at the awaiting bullpen, and the open door of the conference room they're still occupying. "He let Ellie go. She's perfectly fine."

The grief shared for Kristin is suddenly awash with relief at the news of Ellie's release and Jane sits back against her chair with a small sigh that leaves her like a punch.

"Flynn's in a house not far from where Kurzbard and the FBI are. We've gotta go get Ellie, and arrest the guy."

Ray stands quickly from the table, looking at Jane. "You want to ride with me?"

Jane begins to refuse, but she stops herself, briefly grinding her teeth together. She forces herself to stand up, ignoring the chill on her bare arms and the way her eyes fall to her scars as she grabs her phone. "Yeah. Yeah, let's go get this guy."

──────

"Are you Jane?"

Jane's eyes widened at the little girl's voice and she nodded slowly, glancing at Detective Kurzbard as he finally dismissed the couple that Billy had left Ellie with upon her release. "Yeah, I am."

"Derek said your name," Ellie informs her, looking up with bright eyes that Jane instantly saw her father in. "He told me if I got the chance to run, to find someone named Jane."

Jane pursed her lips to stop the quiver of them and she knelt down before the girl, forcing a smile. "You found me, Ellie. Do you– do you want to go see Derek? I think he's going to be really happy to see you again."

Ellie nods, falling silent again, and they beckon her into a squad car, Jane sliding into the backseat along side her, helping her adjust the shock blanket Kurzbard had given her a few minutes ago.

It doesn't take them long to get to the house Billy Flynn occupies, and Jane's breath is caught in her throat as she looks out the window of the car at her team, seeing everyone but Derek standing there.

The bulletproof vest strapped tight around her chest felt as suffocating as ever, but in the moment it provided a bit of security to the inescapable feeling that everything was going to spill out of her if she relaxed too much.

"Where's Derek?"

Jane glances at Ellie, shaking her head. "He's inside. Talking to the bad guy," She fights the urge to get out of the car and go chasing in after him, knowing it was entirely too risky and it would likely get them and whatever hostages Flynn had shot to death. She was worried, sure, but she wasn't stupid.

It feels like they sit there for hours waiting for anything, and then a series of gunshots echo out and Jane feels Ellie flinch beside her.

It's a flurry of movement from there, but the panic rising in her throat doesn't last as Derek walks out of the house alone, no new scratches or bruises on him as he holsters his gun once more and yanks his vest off.

Jane lets out a sigh of relief just as Detective Kurzbard comes around to open the door for them, and Jane slides off the seat, holding a hand out for Ellie to take.

The girl does so silently, banking into Jane's side as she leads them through the maze of cops and cars to where Derek is walking towards them.

Derek's dark eyes shift from Ellie to Jane and Jane bites the tip of her tongue to stave off her exhausted tears.

"You found Jane," Derek murmurs to Ellie, making the girl nod. "Good."

Derek hesitates for a moment before shaking his head. "I'm sorry, kid. Your– your aunt,"

He trails off, and Ellie's eyes shut for a moment before she lets the news of her aunt's death settle over her, entirely too collected for a child her age. Jane knows the feeling.

"But listen to me," Derek starts again, voice gravelly with emotion. "I'm keeping my promise, alright? I promised your dad and your aunt that I'd keep you safe, and I'm going to. However I can. You hear me?"

Ellie nods again and shifts away from Jane's side, opening up her arms with her blanket still clutched in her grasp. Derek quickly opens his arms and lets the girl bury her face in his chest, and his eyes fall shut like he's finally allowed himself to let go of the breath he'd been holding since this all started.

He cups her head gently, patting at the choppy cut of her hair, and leans down to press a kiss to the top of her head. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

──────

They've managed to make it nearly the entire flight home without talking about the case. Jane wonders if it's a record or something. She would've been overjoyed to never talk or think about any of it again, but she knows it's impossible because that haunted look hasn't left Derek's eyes, and there's a dead man's number sitting in her phone, haunting her as the ghost of something she can never have.

She was stupid to think she could anyway.

"He asked me something," Derek says, immediately catching the team's attention like they've just been waiting for him to start the conversation. The chances of him being entirely aware of that and waiting until they're seven minutes out from landing are extremely high, Jane knows.

"Who? Spicer?" Rossi prompts, holding a finger between the pages of his book as he halts his reading.

"No, Billy Flynn," Derek shakes his head. "He asked me something about his mom. When he shot her, when he killed her, if he was setting her free. He said she looked relieved when he shot her, and he's spent all these years believing that he set her free."

JJ hesitates, glancing at Emily beside her before looking back at Derek. "Well... he might have been, in a way. She lived an... unfortunate life. Perhaps to her, death was a relief."

"But it was her son," Morgan retorts, shifting in the leather seat. "And she'd put him through hell just like she did to herself. You said it yourself– she wasn't what a mother should've been. So why would she want to be free of her life if she saw nothing wrong with putting her kid through it?"

"Parental and child abuse is a complicated pathology," Spencer starts, looking at his hands. "There's so many different dynamics of it, it's one of the more unpredictable fields of psychology as a whole. We profile hundreds of victims of parental abuse, but they're all slightly different. They're unpredictable and difficult to study, especially in long term aspects. It's even harder to study a parent that abuses a child. They're usually narcissistic or sociopathic, and have likely been victims of some form of abuse in the past. But whether or not they see error in their ways... all of the studies have been inconsistent."

It's an unsatisfying answer for Derek, and Reid knows it.

"Flynn probably deluded himself into thinking he was freeing her so he could keep doing what he was doing," Rossi suggests. "He was locked up until he was 18. It's isolating, being a juvenile delinquent. Not a lot of friend-making opportunities in places like those. It'd be real easy for you to sit and tell yourself you didn't do anything wrong, and once you're let back out into the world, well,"

"You tell yourself you're just continuing the good work," Prentiss finishes, nodding slightly in agreement.

"His mother could've realized it in that moment," Jane murmurs, not really meaning to speak as she looks down at her chipping nail polish. Glancing up, she sees awaiting eyes on her and she sighs. "You know, a– a deathbed realization. Her son gets fed up with the abuse, shoots her and a client, all of the sudden she sees the error in her ways. So he could've been right about what he saw. There's no way to know, like Spencer said. It's... not an easy thing to study or learn from. There's not usually witnesses left after things like this go down."

"That's how you get killers that fall into the family annihilator category," Rossi says. "Unforgiving."

Jane presses her thumb and her ring finger together, pressing a mindless rhythm. "There's also the cases where the rehabilitation actually works. When self-defense is just that and it doesn't turn someone into a Billy Flynn."

"Those kids are rare," Rossi counters, but doesn't disagree.

"What do you mean?" Prentiss urges, looking between Jane and Rossi.

Rossi moves his book from his lap onto the table, forgoing his reading altogether. "When a child acts in self-defense against an abusive parent, it's usually the culmination of years if not decades of abuse. They snap. Most cases, those kids slip through the system and they get neglected. No proper family dynamics, no psychiatric help, no sense of normalcy, that's how you end up with people like Billy Flynn. It's rare you get a kid in that situation who makes it out of the system in whatever way they managed to and they end up a normal, functioning person of society. Psychologically, from a profiler's point of view, it's a rarity. Not impossible, just– not something you often see in our field. I think we'd be out of a job if it were more common."

Jane wipes a hand over her mouth as the jet roughly lands on the runway, the brakes pulling and prompting them all to gather their things. "Those rare cases, though, Rossi," She says hesitantly, looking at him with furrowed brows as the jet comes to a stop. "Do you really think they're normal? Or do they just hide it better than the Billy Flynn's?"

Rossi contemplates it for a moment, and Jane ignores the feeling of Hotch's eyes burning a hole into the side of her head.

"Both," The man says, shrugging as he stands. "Even if they participate in society like anyone else, I think... one day, they're bound to be confronted with it again. You don't go through something like that and get off scot free for the rest of your life. Even if they don't ever kill again, it's bound to catch up to them one way or another."

Rossi's the first one out of the jet, already talking to JJ about what he's going to have for dinner when he gets home, and Jane's still in her seat, staring at her hands until it's only her, Hotch, and Spencer left.

"Jane?"

She startles, looking up at where Spencer stands in the aisle above her, a concerned furrow to his brow. "Sorry," She shakes her head, moving to stand and grab her duffel bag from the overhead compartment. "I'm exhausted."

"You're not driving home, are you?"

"No, I'm going home with Aaron," She says, glancing at the man as he casually gathers up the paperwork he'd started on the flight, very obviously listening to her talk to Spencer. "Calvin has to get up early in the mornings so I don't go home when we get in late because I don't want to wake him up."

"Doesn't he work at Quantico, too? Why does he have to get up so early?"

Jane's grip tightens on the handle of her bag at Spencer's innocuous question and she shrugs, smiling tightly at him. "He's... a man of routine. Trust me, we're all better off if he gets his beauty sleep."

She laughs it off lazily, following Spencer off the plane as he changes the subject to something mindless that allows some of the tension in her shoulders to bleed away.

She's unaware of the way Hotch's attention hasn't left her the entire time, even as she walks off the jet. 

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author's note; forgot to post this even though I wrote it a week ago

edited and published; 5.16.24.

- liz