A/N

Okay, this is the first CM story I've ever posted. Give it a chance, I hope you guys like it.

-Amora

'In the beginning it was exciting. Hard, but you always felt like you were walking away with something. Further along, the excitement starts to leave you to be replaced by a sense of duty. You knew you were helping people. Now...No matter how many people you save there are always two more to die in their place.

It doesn't make sense anymore. So why do we do it? We take one killer down and move on to another, losing more of ourselves each time. And with what result?

How long could we keep doing this?'

~-~-~-~

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

-Albert Einstein

Emily Prentiss lay in bed staring at her ceiling. The early morning light filtering in through her curtains sent strips of grey light across the plain white. Even though it was still early, it was abnormally dark. Which meant one thing; rain. Emily's alarm clock had gone off fifteen minutes ago, but she couldn't muster the motivation to reach out and turn it off.

She knew she had to get up. Her job wasn't exactly one where she could call in sick whenever she didn't feel like going in. The only thing that would get her out of work today would be something life-threatening. And at the moment, that didn't sound like such a bad thing. If only a freak plane accident would send a jet engine through her bedroom ceiling and onto her bed. But no such luck. Her ceiling remained intact.

With a sigh she sat up and slammed her hand down on the clock, ending its incessant screeching. She stood, but before she could take one step toward her bathroom, her cell phone began to vibrate on her night stand. Resisting the urge to pick up her glock from beside it and shoot the damn thing into a thousand little pieces, she looked down to see who was calling.

Mother. That was exactly what she didn't need right now. Her mother could wait.

Emily ignored the phone as the vibrating ended and then picked up again a moment later, obviously her mother's attempt to annoy her into answering. She simply slammed the bathroom door on the noise. Her morning routine had become so ingrained in her that she needn't pay attention to what she was doing and could let her mind wander freely. To things far away from this life. Happier things. But when her mind wandered to beaches and palm trees, she was reminded of Florida where young girls had been tortured and raped, then videos of it were sent to the victim's mothers.

When she thought of suburban streets where children played, she thought of perverted men watching young boys and girls from gaps in their curtains, computers filled with kiddie porn.

When she thought of the lights of New York at night, she saw innocent people being forced into dark alleys at gunpoint, being beaten, having their hard-earned money stolen just so some junkie could get his next fix.

Emily opened her eyes and stared at the tiled wall of her shower. The water had turned cold. She reached to turn it off, once again wondering why she stayed at this job. And once again her annoying little voice reminded her that even if she left, she couldn't stop seeing the darkness of humanity wherever she went. So why not try to stop some of it?

But then she wondered if putting away a few sadistic perverts was really worth her sanity.

As she exited her bathroom wrapped in a towel it was to find that her phone was still going off on her nightstand. She glared at it for a second before going to pick it up. But it wasn't her mother. It was JJ.

"Yeah JJ?" she answered, holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder as she pulled open her dresser to find clothes.

"We need you here as soon as possible, we've got a bad one," JJ said, sounding overworked as always.

"I'll be there shortly," Emily said. They hung up without any pleasantries.

Emily finished getting ready and rushed from her apartment without time for even a cup of coffee. She would just have to settle for the crappy coffee at the office.

~-~-~-~

"Good morning, Emily," Reid greeted her at the coffee machine.

"If you say so," she grumbled, pouring herself a cup.

"Someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" Morgan grinned, leaning against the counter beside her.

"I didn't sleep well," Emily said. That was an understatement. She barely slept anymore.

"Guys, wheels up in fifteen," JJ said, walking up to them. "We're debriefing on the jet."

"Must be really bad," Morgan sighed.

The trio grudgingly went to their desks to prepare to leave. Emily drug her GoBag out from underneath her desk and made a quick check that everything she needed was inside. She then straightened out her desk, eyeing the large pile of paperwork that had been growing taller and taller over the past few days. She would have to get to it when they returned from the case.

She looked around the office, watching her fellow agents go about their work. A group of people caught her attention. One of the agents showing kids from the academy around the office. They all had a look that she remembered well; excitement, eagerness, awe. If only they knew. No one ever taught them how much the job started to suck. How much it took from you until you were someone you hardly recognized.

"Prentiss," Morgan said, waving a hand in front of her face. She snapped out of her thoughts to look up at him. "We're leaving. You ready?"

"Yeah," she nodded and slung her bag over her shoulder, following the team out of the office.

~-~-~-~

"JJ?" Hotch asked once they were settled on the jet. The blonde nodded and began handing out the case files.

"Over the past month four families have been murdered in their homes late at night in Charleston, South Carolina," she started. "All the families consist of a mother, a father, a son, and a daughter. The father is beaten to death by a blunt object. The son is strangled with some form of wire. And...the little girl is raped and then stabbed. The entire time he does this, the UnSub forces the mother to watch. Once done, he shoots her execution style."

"Obviously an attack on the mother," Emily said, fighting back the urge to vomit as she looked at the crime scene photos. "Indicating that the UnSub has issues with his own mother. He most likely had the same family structure as his victims."

"He's obviously organized," Reid said, tilting his head to the side as he examined one of the pictures. "He brings his own tools and makes sure not to leave anything behind. No forensic evidence?"

JJ shook her head. "There were traces of spermicide recovered from each of the girls," she said, a slight scowl forming on her lips.

"We need to hit the ground running on this one," Hotch said. "JJ, you and I will go to the station. Morgan and Prentiss, I want you to go to the latest crime scene and see what you can find. Rossi and Reid, head over to the morgue and see what they have."

The team nodded their compliance and buckled their seatbelts as they prepared to land.

A/N

Hope you enjoyed it, I'm going to try and make the next chapters longer. This one was just to start off the story, the next ones will definitely be more eventful as well.