A/N: Thanks again for the lovely reviews, guys. It bears repeating! So this is it, the last chapter. Timeline-wise the first chapter (Prologue) takes place between the previous and this one. So we've come full circle. I was looking for a way to tie up the loose ends and at the same time have some kind of calm and quiet ending as a contrast to the more action packed chapters before and I hope it worked out.

The usual disclaimer applies.

Epilogue

One month later

Hotch consults his watch. She's late. Only ten minutes but considering everything that happened, it's enough to make him nervous. His finger is hovering over the display; he aches to call her just to hear her voice tell him everything's fine, but he tries to resist. They are together, skipped the whole dating part and went right from their one-night-stand to something they have never named explicitly but both are certain what it is. Emily wouldn't appreciate him controlling every minute of her life, though, only or even because he feels the need to keep her safe. Give her five more minutes, Hotch makes a deal with himself. Then you can call her if she's still not there. He knows she had a business appointment somewhere in town, is probably stuck in a traffic jam.

His phone rings. It's not Emily as he has hoped but Rossi.

"Hey, Dave," Hotch answers it.

"Were you expecting someone else's call?"

It's futile to argue with another profiler that cannot only read faces but apparently also his voice.

"I'm waiting for Emily." Hotch makes a pause. "She's late. Only 10 minutes. Well..." He consults his watch again. "...12 by now, but I know it's not much and probably nothing."

"You can't put her in a cage, Hotch," his friend's voice is gentle, understanding.

Dave Rossi knows Hotch's history. The fact that he lost his first wife to a psychopath and Emily almost to another will always tarnish their relationship in one way or the other. You can never really get past something like that.

"I know," Hotch agrees.

"So… I wanted to invite you two to dinner. I'm having the team over next weekend and thought you could join us."

"That would be great. What's the occasion?"

"A new recipe I want to try out. I need volunteers."

"I'm always happy to help you out," Hotch laughs, Emily's delay forgotten for a moment. "I'll have to check with Emily but if she's free, I'm sure she'd love to come, too."

What started out as a work-related alliance is slowly turning into friendship. Emily already met with JJ and Garcia for lunch and Hotch knows she likes Morgan, Dave and Reid as well. Thank God Derek could be resuscitated after his heart had stopped beating because the bullet had hit him in the chest instead of the shoulder as Hotch had intended. As to his son, he and Emily concur with each other that they want to take it slow, but the way things are progressing, Hotch already thinks about the best scenario how to introduce Emily to Jack. He loves her, his friends love her, and his son will love her, too.

"Everything will be fine," Dave assures him, returning to the topic at the beginning of his call.

"Yes, it will," Hotch says, having spotted Emily among the crowd.

"She's there."

Dave read his mind or rather his voice again. Obviously it's very easy to see through him when it comes to her.

"Yes, she is."

"Say hi from me and don't forget about the invitation."

"I will and I won't."

Hotch hangs up, watching Emily approach him. Their meeting place is a café near her office. They both had already preferred to take a coffee break there now and then before they met and now it has become their romantic hideaway from everyday life with its small tables and narrow booths that allow them to sit side by side very closely

A young woman with a toddler passes by. In fact, she looks more like a teenager and for a moment Hotch is reminded of the trigger that had started the chain of events that almost cost Emily her life. By now they know that the fifteen-year-old granddaughter of the old priest had an abortion. Aside from the fact that it went against his beliefs, it must have reminded him of the scenario decades ago when he had cursed Emily for doing the same thing save that this time he snapped completely.

Hotch feels his muscles ache like a phantom pain as this thought leads to another and he remembers the condition he was in when he woke up from the injection the police officers had given him. The last act of a drama orchestrated by the Vatican. Apparently they have their eyes and ears everywhere. To this day neither Hotch nor the BAU team know how they learned they had found the rogue priest and his hiding place. Local police were not supposed to be on site, let alone to intervene until two police officers were bribed and did exactly that. It was a rather messy plan though. By mistake they assumed only Hotch had been there to free Emily. The injection was supposed to muddle Hotch so that he wouldn't be a credible witness and the reputation of the church wouldn't be sullied. Not only the old priest and his student liked to use chemical substances. When Rossi walked in on them, his instinct told him to play along. With due regard to his profiling skills it didn't take him long to realize that the two local police officers involved weren't a real threat though. As soon as he whipped his credentials out and read them their Miranda rights, they admitted everything. After Dave had reported them there was an investigation and they were laid off. In the end everyone just wanted things to be over because of the involvement of the Vatican and the highly political nature of the situation.

"Hi." Emily kisses him, jolting him out of his thoughts. It's what couples do, and yet, Hotch can't help but feel a hint of pride at her public display of affection that shows everyone she belongs to him.

"Greetings from Dave," he tells her as they go inside, heading for their favorite booth.

"Thanks."

They sit down. These encounters, as brief as they sometimes are, are their escape from the world's everyday madness. They relax and talk and just have a good time together, but not today. Something is going on. Emily's expression as well as posture are tense.

"Didn't it go well?"

"Um... what?" she asks distracted.

"Your meeting. Was there a problem?"

"My meeting… um… no, no, it was good. Very good, actually." She smiles faintly before she gets serious again.

It's not anger, Hotch decides, but rather a mix of sadness and confusion.

"Emily, what's going on?"

There is a scar on her temple from the plaster that hit her face when Morgan tried to kill her and the bullet stroke the wall instead. She covers it with make up so that it's almost invisible, but Hotch knows the exact spot where it is. It's the spot she keeps touching now absent-mindedly.

"I'm late because Clyde called me," she tells him, searching for the right words. "I don't know how to say this because I can't believe it, but... Ian killed him. The priest's pupil, the guy who took me."

Hotch is speechless. They didn't even know what he looked like, let alone where he was. In the chaos that had followed Morgan's shooting, he had managed to escape. "How did Doyle find him? How does Clyde know about it? And how can we even be sure that it's true? That he actually killed him?"

Emily shrugs; she can't get her head around the news as well. "I… Clyde knows because he has reliable sources who told him. Hotch..." she looks him straight in the eye. "Ian… he wanted me to know. He practically delivered the message to Clyde through his sources so that he could tell me."

"Do you think it's true?"

She clenches her teeth. "Yes. Ian is a lot of things, but he is no liar."

"Why would he do that?"

"Either to protect me or to let me know he won't tolerate any rivals when it comes to threatening my life. That this is supposed to be his exclusive métier."

"And which one do you think it is?"

She takes a deep breath. "I can't say. I really can't."

Emily's former relationship with Doyle, even if she was undercover, wasn't faked, at least not anymore once they had crossed the point of return. From what Hotch knows about it, and he is certain he doesn't even remotely know everything, Hotch considers it very well possible that Ian Doyle – as much as he hates Emily for betraying him – still loves her and wants to protect her. That he killed out of love and won't harm her. Then again, maybe Doyle is watching them at that very moment, waiting for his chance to take revenge. Maybe living in peace, being safe is a concept not meant for them.

Right here and now, though, Hotch knows that he is happy for the first time in a long while, and that whatever it takes, he won't let anyone take this happiness away from him again. He grabs her hand.

"Can you take the rest of the day off? I have to pick Jack up from school in an hour. Why don't you come with me so that you can meet him?"

She raises an eyebrow. "What about taking it slow?"

"Why wait when I know what I want?"

Emily ponders over it. They haven't talked about their future, about moving in together or even more. Love confessions are mumbled words in the aftermath of their passion for now. Hotch almost wants to tell her that it is to soon that she should forget about it when she smiles at him in a way that is a yes, fetching her phone, probably to call her assistant to cancel her appointments in the afternoon.

"So you know what you want, huh?" Emily casually asks as she is waiting for her assistant to answer the call, looking him over, her expression dare and promise at the same time. There are so many things he still doesn't know about her and he can't wait to find out. "Good to know."

The End

I'm aware that it's an open ending regarding the Ian Doyle situation and that this is not everyone's cup of tea, but I liked the ambiguity of it, the contrast between their happiness and a possible threat for it that might or might not be out there because – let's face it – there will always be some crazy psychopath threatening Emily's or Hotch's life.

– Thank you so much for reading, reviewing and your support despite my fickle muse! –