A/N I don't know how you're all coping with the wait for 10x11 but I can safely say that the feels are killing me. This is my coping mechanism.

This is written from JJ's POV

Enjoy :)

You tear a towel from your locker and wipe the sweat from your face and neck. It's just happened again, and it scares you, perhaps even more than the event itself. For the last few weeks the flashbacks have been returning with a terrifying intensity. They're not predictable; sometimes there's a clear trigger, but other times they just hit you out of nowhere, a waking nightmare.

Christmas was surprisingly difficult. You had gone out to dinner with the team- it had been so long since you'd all had a social night out together- for a full Christmas meal. Turkey, stuffing, pigs in blankets, cranberry sauce. Everything a festive roast should have. Including Christmas crackers.

And therein lay the problem. The Christmas crackers. Because according to your mind, the sharp snap of Christmas crackers being pulled sounds exactly like the crackle of electricity from jump leads.

So whilst the rest of the team was laughing and cheerfully embracing the festive spirit, you were back in that basement, reliving the fire that burned through your body as Askari demanded your codes.

Get it together, Jareau. It's what you told yourself then, it's what you tell yourself now, but somehow that doesn't help. Because you have no control over your subconscious and for some reason, said subconscious seems hell bent on scaring the snot out of you.

Sometimes it's not even images or sounds, that come back to haunt you, sometimes it's just an overwhelming, paralysing feeling of fear.

It is one of these types of flashbacks that just hit you, in the middle of a bout with your trainer. It froze you in place, utterly trapped within your own inexplicable terror. Terror so cold and biting you now wonder whether it froze the blood in your veins, maybe that was why you couldn't move?

Thanks to your incapacitation, you took a punch squarely in the face and got knocked on your arse. Although for that you're grateful; you've never been able to snap out the memories before, normally you just have to wait for them to run their course. You know the breathing exercises, but they don't work nearly so well as a fist connecting with your nose at high velocity.

You still feel the chill of that fear, trying to claw its way back into you, to trap you again.

No! You feel anger flare inside you and lash out, slamming your fist into the flimsy metal of the locker door with a shout of frustration.

Hastings did not break you. You may have come close, but you did not break then, you will not break now.

You kick the locker door this time. It feels good, allowing the heat of your anger to chase away the freezing cold of fear. Hot tears tease your eyes. They irritate you, because if you need to cry, you set yourself up with a tear-jerker movie and get it all out of your system in the privacy of your own home, in the arms of the man you love. You do not bring tears to work. Period.

You brush them away with the back of your hand and collapse onto the bench behind you. You haven't told Will about the flashbacks. He's been so good over the last year. Accepting your mood swings, dealing with your nightmares. Offering you nothing but support. He's been what has kept you going.

But he doesn't need to know about the flashbacks.

Sure, you miss having the warmth of his touch, his soothing words, to bring you out of that basement and back into the present, but he doesn't deserve to have to cope with them as well. He's still concerned about you as it is- whilst the nightmares are less frequent than they were in the months immediately following your ordeal, they never stopped entirely.

They worry him, when you wake up screaming and thrashing in the middle of the night, but for you they're just a fact of life. The price you've paid for your life.

You are drawn from your thoughts by a voice from your right. "JJ, are you okay?" Hotch asks.

You look up, hoping that you hide your pain well enough that he can't see it, although it's probably a little late for that. "Uh, yes. I'm fine. Why?" You say quickly. Then you stop for a moment. Hotch is stood in his suit, in the women's locker room. "What are you doing in here?"

If he had been less concerned about you, he might have laughed, or at least smiled. If you weren't so messed up at the moment, you might have done the same. Instead you begin to feel defensive when he replies with "I heard a loud crash and wanted to make sure no-one was hurt".

Two pairs of eyes glance towards fresh dent in the locker. The blush that invades your cheeks betrays you; it confirms what he already suspected.

"I'm fine, Hotch" You repeat, keeping your voice calm.

"No, you're not. You can't bury what happened to you forever. I know you're struggling. I've seen the pain in your eyes when you day-dream, when you think no-one is looking. JJ, if you ever want to talk…" He says gently, leaving the sentence hanging because you both know what he means.

Part of you is grateful for his offer but another part rebels; the anger that was so comforting a minute ago but now is so misplaced flares up again. And then you realise: you're angry a lot these days. Angry at yourself, angry at Will, angry at Hotch. It's irrational but uncontrollable.

You snort derisively, "Since when did talking actually help anyone? I went to therapy, I did my psych eval, I went to more therapy, and what good did it do me? None!"

Hotch stares at you in disbelief, because you're shouting now. You're shouting at your boss. Your boss who has only ever tried to help. But you don't care right now because you're tired of being afraid, tired of being angry. But most of all you're tired of pretending to be okay.

You continue yelling, simply because it feels good and you can't bear to keep everything inside anymore. "I still wake up in the middle of the night, convinced I'm still in that basement. I can still feel my lungs burning as they waterboard me. I still cry out as Askari plunges his knife into Cruz's stomach." Your voice is dying down a little, hoarse with emotion. "I can still feel his hands on my skin."

Suddenly feeling vulnerable, you cross your arms across your body. You feel guilty as well, because he was only trying to help.

"I'm so tired, Hotch." You whisper, and as you do, you can see that he understands that you don't just mean physically. "I'm tired of having to be strong, at work, at home. I just can't do it anymore." You feel like you're falling apart, and maybe you are?

You sit back down on the bench again and rest your head in your hands, not even caring that Hotch is there to see your weakness. Tears run freely down your cheeks; you no longer have the strength to keep them at bay.

You're not surprised when he sits down next to you, although you are surprised when he addresses you by your full name.

"Jennifer," he says, "what you went through, what Hastings put you through, was something no-one should ever have to experience. I know what it's like to feel helpless, to feel weak. You wonder if you're the same person you were before, if you will ever be that person again"

You rake your nails across your skin as grief overcomes you, grief for the woman you were four years ago.

"Then after a while you realise that what happened has changed you, permanently. That there is no going back to the person you were before. But that's okay, because what happened in that basement, what happened in Afghanistan, has made you stronger."

You exhale sharply. You don't feel strong. You feel brittle and fractured, as though at any moment you might shatter into a thousand pieces and never be able to fit yourself back together.

"JJ. Whenever you feel weak, or scared, or just angry, there's something you need to remember. Hastings is dead and you are alive. You beat him." He squeezes your hand and you look up at him. He knows you understand, and you do. You may not have truly come to terms with everything that happened, but you will, given time.

He squeezes your hand again and gets up to leave. "The dead are gone, they can't hurt us anymore. The only power they have is the power we give them."

You sit for a few moments in silence after he leaves. There is a new warmth spreading through you. Not the fierce, violent flames of anger that you have become so accustomed to. This is a gentler but ultimately stronger heat of defiance and hope.

A/N well I hope you enjoyed that little one-shot, let me know what you think? For anyone interested, I've written a Willifer o/s that's tagged to 200 but works as a 10x11 tag if you squint, it's called Nightmares in the Daytime if you want to take a look.