Summary: Follow-up to All This Time: It's Not Loaded and ATT: Good Cop, Bad Cop. READ THOSE FIRST! This takes place approximately one week after the latter story ends. I honestly can't remember if I said in a story chronologically later than this that Charlotte didn't know about Emily's PTSD, but I don't care and I'm way too lazy to go read all of them and figure it out. Just enjoy!

A/N: Again, these are not in chronological order. I will fill in the gaps in the earlier years as I write more of these. Enjoy!

Age Guide: Hotch: 61, Emily: 56, Sean: 46, Jack: 21, Henry: 18, Charlotte: 16; Ryan and Benjamin: 14

May 2027

"No, no, no," Emily moaned, popping up in bed and taking deep, heaving breaths. "Please no…" She pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead and pushed hard. It wasn't until Hotch moved next to her that she remembered she wasn't sleeping alone.

"Whussa matter?" Hotch sat up and scooted closer to her.

Emily didn't answer, just pulled the covers back and walked into their bathroom. Her husband followed behind.

"Bad dream?" Hotch grew more concerned as Emily turned on the cold water and splashed her face multiple times. When she finally paid him some attention, she looked like a scared child. "Flashback?" he asked, praying he was wrong.

Emily nodded and stepped into Hotch's open arms, wishing she could drive the imagery away.

"How?" Hotch asked, devastated. "It's been what, five years since your last one?"

Emily nodded before the world outside her mind went away. She didn't hear Hotch asking her if she could hear him, if she wanted to go lie down with him. Somehow she managed to stay standing, but she didn't even feel the tile beneath her feet. Her only senses revolved around a trauma over twenty years old, one that rarely even crossed her mind anymore. The men…the concrete room…the things they'd done. When she finally came to—strange, as she couldn't remember passing out completely—she felt a cold sweat running down her face and chest. Then she noticed she was lying in bed with Hotch behind her, locking her up in his arms, caressing whatever bit of her he could reach.

"I'm sorry," she murmured when she could hear through his erratic breathing that he was trying not to cry.

"Don't be. Is it over?" Hotch asked, pushing his emotions back for Emily's sake.

"Yeah, seems like it," she said, rolling over onto her back and hoping Hotch wouldn't release his hold on her. He did no such thing. "When did I pass out?"

"You started going limp in the bathroom, it was strange. I brought you back to bed and you closed your eyes and…I tried some ice water on your hands, tried shaking you…I told myself I'd give you a few minutes before I called for help."

"How long was I out?"

"Maybe ten minutes."

Emily knew full well that Hotch having to witness her flashbacks was his own form of torture. "I'll make an appointment tomorrow, see if talking it out will help. Hopefully my therapist is still practicing. I have absolutely no idea what brought this on."

"Do you think, maybe…no…"

"What?"

"Do you think it was what happened with Charlie at prom? You've been stressing a lot about that lately."

Emily gave this some thought. She shrugged. "You'd think I would've had a flashback the night of, if that were the case."

Hotch shook his head against the pillow. "Not necessarily. Maybe your mind knows that the worst is over and it's…okay to react to the stress now. We know Charlie's okay, we know she's not pregnant. I'm not saying this is the trigger for sure. I'm just saying the mind works in mysterious ways. And Charlie's trauma was a trauma for you too. It was for all of us."

—

Emily had to wait two weeks for an appointment with a new therapist; her therapist from years ago, who had been happy to see her from time to time when her flashbacks popped back up, had moved sometime within the last five years, as it turned out. By the time she finally saw someone about her flashbacks, she'd had several more, one almost every night. She was getting so little sleep that she was finding it much more difficult than usual to keep the household running.

"How did it go?" was the first thing out of Hotch's mouth when he got home from work.

"How did what go?" Ben asked.

Emily gave Hotch a look that said Really? "Nothing, honey. Go set the table, please."

"Just tell me, well or not well," Hotch said now that he was sure they had the kitchen to themselves. He wrapped his arms around her and spoke right into her ear.

"Eh," Emily said, rubbing Hotch's back and savoring the warmth of his embrace. "Drugs again."

"As long as they help," he said, drawing away from her and touching her cheek. "I won't pretend to understand how awful this is for you, but everything's going to be okay."

Emily forced a smile before giving Hotch a kiss. "I know. I love you."

And then he was hugging her again, littering her hair with kisses. "I love you, too. Need anything? Need me to go to the store?"

"No, why?"

"Just thought I'd offer."

Emily grinned for real this time and pulled Hotch away so she could lay the back of her hand against her forehead. "You feeling okay?"

He chuckled. "Let's eat. I'm starving."

—

"Mom, I have a headache," Charlotte complained before bed the next evening. Her parents were relaxing together on the couch, each reading a book as the house quieted down.

Emily, still tired and a little short-tempered with the kids in the evening, sighed. "I don't know what to tell you, sweetie. Did you take something for it?"

"A Tylenol, but it didn't work. Do you have anything stronger?"

"Yeah, in our medicine cabinet," Emily said absentmindedly. "Go ahead and take an Excedrin and go to sleep. No more staying up until three in the morning. I don't care if it's summer vacation, you need rest."

"Okay," Charlotte sighed, disappearing up the stairs. She returned a minute later with a horrified look on her face. "What is this?" she asked, holding up an orange prescription pill bottle. "Who's depressed? Is one of you sick?"

Hotch and Emily exchanged beyond worried glances. "Charlie, it's nothing—" Hotch began.

Emily shook her head. "No, it's okay. We shouldn't lie to her," she mumbled.

"Oh, you're not lying to me already?" Charlotte snapped.

"Hey," Hotch scolded her. "I don't want to hear you talking like that to either one of us. We've taught you better than that."

Emily gave Charlotte a pacifying smile and motioned for her to join her on the couch. Hotch scooted over and they made room for their daughter on the end. "Listen, honey," Emily said, taking the pills from Charlotte, "these are mine, but I'm not depressed. Aaron, can you go make sure everyone else is shut up in their rooms?"

Hotch nodded and headed upstairs.

"If you're not depressed, then what're they for?" Charlotte said, growing visibly more worried when Emily slid an arm behind her back.

Emily hadn't wanted Hotch around for this part for a reason. "Well, a few years before you were born—so almost twenty years ago, I guess—wow, time flies—"

"Mom, come on."

"Sorry," Emily said with a gentle but pained smile. "Anyway, back before your dad and I got together—permanently, anyway—we were working a case in Los Angeles. We made a strategically unsound decision and long story short, I ended up…" Emily stopped and stared down into her lap, wondering if she could say the words to someone so young and, despite recent events, still so innocent.

"I can handle it," Charlotte said, finding her mom's free hand. "It's okay. You can tell me. I can take it."

Emily laughed sadly and kissed her daughter's forehead. "I know you're strong, but I'm not so sure about me. I'm just not sure I can handle telling you. But I will. I umm…ended up being abducted by two men who held me captive for a day and a half."

If Charlotte had looked horrified before, Emily didn't know the word for how she looked now. "A day and a half? What did they do to you? Why did it take everyone so long to find you?"

"Well, L.A. is a big city," Emily said. "All the bad guys needed was to lose the team in traffic, and they did. As for what they did to me, they…beat me, quite a bit."

Charlotte's eyes were streaming already. "Did they—you know—"

"They didn't rape me, if that's what you're wondering," Emily said. "I promise you that."

"So they just beat you, nothing…sexual?"

Emily couldn't blame Charlotte for her curiosity. Hotch had begged to know these things for ages. But hearing it once had been enough for him. She wanted to lie, oh how she wanted to. But before she could decide whether she was going to, Charlotte had already caught on and her face contorted beyond recognition. "Honey, relax," Emily said, wrapping her up in her arms. "Yes, there were sexual elements involved, but this was a long, long time ago."

"What exactly did they do?"

"I won't go into details, I'm sorry. Your dad and my therapists are the only ones who know and it's going to stay that way .What's important now is that I'm just fine, okay?"

Charlotte shook her head. "If you're fine, then why do you need the pills?"

"Well, for many years now, my past hasn't been a problem. But once in a blue moon, I'll have flashbacks of what happened to me. It's kind of like a bad dream that repeats itself. And you know what's really sweet?" Emily wrapped Charlotte back up in her arms.

"What?"

"When I do start having flashbacks, your dad holds me and talks about you guys to distract me. Sometimes it cuts off the episode completely."

Charlotte didn't seem comforted or entertained by this, even if she was her dad's biggest fan out of all the children. "How come you're having flashbacks now? How long has it been going on?"

"Well, a couple of weeks ago I had one and they were happening quite frequently after that. I saw a therapist yesterday and got back on the medication that worked for me before. We'll see how it goes. It might be a few weeks before they kick in."

"You didn't answer my other question," Charlotte said, unsatisfied.

"Which one?"

"I asked why you're having flashbacks again. Does something, like, trigger them?"

"Not usually something in specific. It used to be that way, but my worst spell was over when you were still a baby. Since then, all my episodes have seemed stress-related, that's all. Don't worry about it."

"It was me," Charlotte realized, rising from the couch. "It was me and Joe and the whole thing—and then you've been trying to figure out who slashed his tires—"

"It was your uncle, no?"

Charlotte froze. "You know what I mean."

"Charlotte…"

"Okay, it was me. I did it and Uncle Sean took the fall for it."

Emily's heart actually warmed. "Well, we can't change what happens on Joe's end, he's got his new tires. But you do understand you'll be punished, right?"

"Even though I came clean?" Charlotte asked behind her hands.

"Charlotte, you did not come clean. You got caught," Emily said, trying not to laugh. "Come here." She pulled the girl back down onto the couch. "I love you."

"Love you, too. Sorry about your flashbacks. I know you said they're not my fault—"

"And I meant it. Go to bed now, sweetie. Sleep off that headache."

—

"You did really well with her," Hotch said when he and Emily finally turned in that night. Emily shot him a halfhearted grin with her toothbrush stuck in her mouth. She shrugged.

"What? I mean it. She likes when we're honest with her, even if it hurts. And I know you're always struggling a little with how close you to are, and maybe this will be another thing that cements that bond, you know? She has yet another reason to look up to you."

"Okay, stop," Emily said, lifting up the covers and sliding into bed.

"I mean it, Em. She needs a strong woman to set an example for her in life, and she's got one. And her finding out about all of this is only going to make you stronger in her eyes. As much as I hate it when she hurts, maybe it was good that she found out."

"Do you think she thought I was weak before?" Emily asked non-accusatorily.

"No, but I think maybe you both struggled to find ways to relate to each other, just because she's always been such a daddy's girl. You've both been through a trauma, and now she knows."

Emily nodded as the walls appeared around her and the edges of the concrete room went dim.

"Em?"

"Hmm?" Emily couldn't even make out that Hotch was saying her name, though. She did, however, sense his arms enfolding her. She could see the men's menacing smiles and she felt naked, but she also felt her husband's gentle breath on the top of her head and heard him start talking.

"You know what Charlie told me the other day?"

Emily was actually able to respond, though she still couldn't escape. "What?"

"That her friends are jealous because they think her parents are cool. And instead of laughing about it, she told me she agreed. And she said, 'Especially Mom.'"

"Please," Emily muttered.

"Why is that so hard to believe? I'm not the cool one. I'm the one she clings to most often, but you're the one she looks up to. That's becoming more and more apparent the older she gets. Maybe she'll never admit it outright, but she adores you, Emily. She really does."

Emily nodded and clenched her pillow. Before much longer, the visions were nothing but memories again. Memories she could tuck away at will, at least for tonight. She turned in Hotch's embrace and kissed his cheek. "You didn't shave today."

"I was feeling a little sluggish this morning, that's all."

"Because of me. I woke you up in the middle of the night, didn't I?"

"Yes," he said, not sugarcoating the facts. "But you know what? That's okay."

A/N: Please leave a review!