"Please! Not spencer! Don't hurt him! Don't! please!" she was tied to a chair, her hair falling around her face and her eyes were swimming with tears, blurring the sight of her boyfriend being beaten bloody by her ex- lover. She knew she shouldn't have involved them, and after he's done with spencer he'll move on to the rest of her family. Pen and Derek, Hotch and Dave, and JJ. And oh god, the kids! Jack and Henry, her little babies. She fights harder against her binds and tries to find a way to help spencer because she knows she isn't going to survive this without him, ever. And then there's a ringing in her ears, had he hit her? Was there some kind of rupture in her eardrum? She can't afford an injury right now because spencer is dying and she cannot lose him but the ringing is persistent and it won't stop, god why won't it stop?
The phone on the table in front of her is still ringing when she wakes up with a jerk and she quickly picks up without looking at the caller ID.
"Prentiss"
"Well hello to you too" JJ's voice is warm and sweet as always and she is alive, so alive and immediately calmer hearing her best friend's voice after all these months.
"Jen? Is everyone alright?" Please let it be only a dream and not a memory, please please…
"Yeah everyone's fine Em" The question is there, unspoken but still present- are you okay?
"I'll be better once I'm home" she smiles, the muscles in her cheeks feeling strange after three months in Paris with barely any outside contact and therefore pretty much zero smiling.
"we'll all be better once your home" She can practically see JJ with tears in her eyes, and she has missed her so much. Missed them, and him.
"I should be there in about thirty minutes, is that alright?" she can't wait to see him much longer, despite knowing that he will hate her for lying about being dead, for leaving him and not explaining things. But even seeing him for a moment, for the shortest millisecond in history will be fine because the she'll know that he's alive and well. Or as well as you can be when your dead secret girlfriend comes back to life.
"It's great. Hotch and I can go in and tell them now." She's ready to hang up when she hears her friend's voice again, "welcome home" home. That word means so much, about the team and Spencer and her apartment and his and ever her mother. But she is home, and while that gives her no assurance of things becoming better, it's always a good start.