Imagine person A of your OTP jumping into a river to save a drowning child and passing them out to person B.
When they got to the abandoned cabin in the woods, they knew they had run out of time. It was a race against time they weren't prepared for; an escalation they hadn't been able to keep track of that seemed to have slipped by all of them. His first two victims dead - two more found drowned and abandoned in ditches around the small county within frighteningly short intervals of each other...the monster they were hunting was devolving, and devolving faster than they could work.
But they found him, at last, by pure chance - a stroke of luck and prayer and sheer effort of leaving no rock unturned in the county had given them a name and an address, and they were off in a flurry of guns and sirens wailing.
Hotch took point, rushing through the woods towards the cabin. His heart was pounding in his chest, his gun steady in his grip as he kept his blazing gaze on the rickety wooden cabin before them. The rest of his team surrounded the cabin - he saw Emily round the corner towards the back, but he knew by the unsettling stillness that their UnSub and their victim was gone.
Still the air sparked with an anxious absence - they hadn't left that long ago.
And then Morgan's booming roar echoed through the space; birds took flight in a startled rush of wings and feathers around them. "HOTCH, HE'S DOWN BY THE RIVER!"
He bolted down towards the river, his feet tromping against the greenery and shrubs as he let the sounds of rushing water guide him. Vaguely he could hear and feel Emily racing beside him, the quiet gust of her breaths as she dodged a tree and lunged over a fallen bark. Their eyes met amid the haste, a split second of dark and hazel, and they burst down onto their UnSub together, guns trained smoothly on the frantic man.
"Ezekiel Dwayne," his voice was surprisingly steady; dangerously harsh and low. His eyes flashed a cold steel as his gun trained on the chest of the man holding the young girl to him. She was weeping quietly, her wide, dark eyes red and filled with a fear that was never meant for her. Around her neck, Dwayne's arm wrapped tight as he pressed a hunting knife to her neck, edging them closer towards the rushing river. Their eyes met, the terrified on the unmoved, and he snapped his gaze back to the UnSub with a harsh fury. "You and I both know that this is where it ends - make this easier on yourself and surrender, and no one will be hurt."
Dwayne hissed at him, baring his teeth as he pulled the girl closer and pressed the blade into her skin. The girl squeaked and Emily twitched beside Hotch, but neither of them moved further as Dwayne dragged the girl towards the edge of the giant boulder sitting by the river. "If you want me, you're going to have to fish me out of the river." His eyes darted to the girl. "The both of us."
"NO!"
Several things happened at once - gunshots rang through the air, two of them, and they watched as Dwayne staggered backwards, faltering at the edge of the river before disappearing down into the rushing water. Hotch rushed forward the same time Emily did, but skidded to a halt just as he watched Emily dive into the river after the screaming little girl. He stood stunned for a moment, eyes wide as he watched the woman disappear into the angry roar of water. His heart sank into his chest when he saw Emily struggle to move.
"EMILY!"
She couldn't get her head above the water, but that didn't matter. The rushing water made it hard to hear and hard to see; she was sure it was going to leave her deaf at the way it rushed into her ears and nose, but Emily pushed forward with the stream, reaching out blindly and grabbing onto the scrawny girl's arm. With as much strength as she could, Emily kicked out, forcing them both above the water as they gasped for breath.
The current was too strong to fight.
The girl's nails dug into her skin as she clung onto Emily, sobbing openly now as she choked and sputtered on the water rushing over them. She was screaming something Emily couldn't comprehend, but the woman merely pressed her protectively into her chest and kicked frantically towards the side of the river - the roots protruding from the earth would be strong enough to hold onto.
Emily wrapped her hand into one, wincing as the movement jerked her shoulder nearly out of its socket as she fought the current and hauled the girl higher over her head to keep her breathing. She had swallowed mouthfuls of water already, gasping for air herself, but Emily focused her strength on lifting them above the current, even if by an inch.
"EMILY!"
She cried out at the roaring voice, relief rushing through her as she saw above them her Unit Chief, crouching by the tree's roots and reaching down for them. "H-otch!" she choked, sputtering as more water went down her throat, and she summoned the last of her strength to lift the girl overhead, submerging herself in the process. She waited until she felt the girl lift away from her arms, flailing her legs to keep from floating away, but as she kicked out against the current again, Emily felt her shoulder pop and then a burst of agony blackening her vision.
She sucked in a gasp to scream, and instead swallowed another gulp of water.
Her grip loosened on the root, and Emily felt the current rushing to take her away, as if waiting anxiously for that very moment to take her into their arms like a cold, wet embrace. She fought it for as long as she could; above her even through the water, she could hear Hotch's thunderous voice calling her name, but Emily couldn't fight the current with one good arm. It was dislocated, definitely; done in by a tree root, of all things.
A part of her was certain that she would leave the world with those last thoughts; 'of all things, Emily - you're outdone by a tree.'
But then there was a sharp plunge of something reaching for her, an arm, a body, something - Emily felt it wrap around her waist like a muscular python before she was hauled out of the water in a rush, coughing and gasping and retching at the sudden attack of air into her lungs. She cringed as she was hauled upwards and laid down onto the ground, curling onto her side almost immediately as she clutched at her dislocated shoulder and simultaneously regurgitated the water in her stomach.
Her body was singing from the assault of sensations around her, overwhelmed by the noise and the light and the lightheaded dizziness overcoming her from being denied air for so long. She reached out at the person hovering over her; the shadow casted by his body shielding her eyes from the light as he called to her, touched her cheek and forced her to look at him.
Her name came to her like a whisper in the breeze, so hard and so loud, but Emily merely forced herself to focus for a brief moment - for as long as she could - on the face of her handsome and now decidedly wet Unit Chief hovering over her.
"Emily! Emily, look at me, Emily - stay awake! You stay awake , damn it! That's an order, agent!"
Water dripped from him onto her cheek, on her blue-tinged lips, and Emily could only force her unseeing eyes open to focus on the hovering man's face for a brief moment to see the clearest shade of hazel she'd ever seen in her life.
"Emily, please..." he begged her. "Please stay awake. For me."
But then the darkness came, and Emily heard his desperate voice screaming her name before she collapsed into the groaning abyss.
He paced the halls of the emergency room so much he was getting dizzy; his clothes were still damp, his shoes squeaking noisily against the linoleum floor. The girl was safe, their UnSub dead...but Emily had yet to come to from her collapse. They'd rushed her to the ER; he'd hauled her into his arms and roared for a doctor as soon as his Italian shoes skidded against the sanitized floor, and they'd taken her from him into a room away from him.
He'd tried to go with them, truly, but burly male nurses had kept him back and warned him from keeping pace with the urgent group of nurses and doctors. This was an emergency, and any interruptions to their treatment of her could potentially risk her ability to recover.
And so he'd stayed put.
It killed him inside, deeply, profoundly, but he stayed for her sake. He wasn't going to get in the way of them saving her life, no matter how badly he wished he could be there to ensure that the job was done.
He wasn't going to lose Emily again.
The team had all demanded to stay with him, to stay for Emily, but he'd sent them along to finish their case - they needed to bring the little girl home to her family and clear up in the police department to leave. Emily hated to be fussed over anyway, and so they'd reluctantly left him to wait for news.
"Do you want a change of clothes, at least?" JJ asked him gently; she hadn't seen him so worried since they'd sent Emily to Europe.
Hotch nodded gratefully at her, brushing his hand along her arm. "Thank you."
And so he changed out of his clothes and waited. They sat in a damp grocery bag on a seat in the waiting room as he paced and paced and paced - until he grew dizzy and anxious, and then he paced some more.
Finally, finally - he'd lost count of the hours beyond the first two; a man in a white lab coat approached him. His scrubs and coat were devoid of any sign of blood, and Hotch heaved a sigh of relief at that - before he demanded to see Emily.
"She's my agent," he told the man stubbornly. "I want to see her."
The doctor smiled at him gently, his hand held up to soothe the anxious man. He figured it would be best to indulge the frazzled federal agent soon; his hazel eyes were already frantically wide and nearing hysterical. He was fairly certain the man would have a stroke if he was kept away from the woman any longer.
"She's resting," he told Hotch, frowning grimly at the man as he addressed his medical chart. "We had to pump her stomach to get rid of the water, and we realigned her shoulder with little trouble. However, I insist on keeping her overnight."
Hotch felt his heart sink into his stomach; he was almost afraid of asking why, but he owed it to Emily to know. "Is - is something wrong?" he asked hesitantly, as his hand curled into a fist by his side to keep it from shaking. It was the cold, of course - the chill that had sank into his skin and nothing else.
The man in the lab coat shook his head. "She's fine," he assured the man. "But I'd like to keep her for observation. The water was filthy and I'd like to reduce the possibility of her contracting a water-borne virus from it. Beyond that, I'm also rather concerned with secondary drowning."
"Secondary drowning...?" His spine grew cold.
The doctor nodded grimly. "It's not very common in adults, but sometimes if there's enough water entering the lungs, it causes a drop in her blood oxygen levels, and her lungs are unable to accept enough oxygen due to the blockage the water causes. At this rate, Agent Prentiss' blood oxygen levels are rather low, but no cause for alarm. I'd simply prefer it if we kept her under observation for the night."
Slowly, Hotch nodded. His mind whirled with everything he'd been told; the thoughts of the horror of Emily dying in her hospital bed forced the color away from his face and his stomach to roil, and so the man swallowed thickly and nodded curtly to the doctor.
"May I stay with her?" It was nearly a plea. "I'm her Unit Chief - her health is my priority and I'd like to ensure that she recovers well. I would be able to alert them if anything were to...were to happen." The thought left a foul taste in his mouth.
The doctor smiled kindly, knowingly at the man. He'd seen many husbands and lovers in this man's position; terrified and anxious over news and conditions of their weak and weary partners. It was endearing and intriguing to know that this man - so stoic and serious looking he looked - was so horribly shaken by his agent's mishap.
"Of course."
1 of 2.