Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds or its characters.
This is my Prentiss entry for the-vampire-act's CM Ladies Writing Contest (co-hosted by hudson911).
It had happened so fast.
So, why was it then that each second seemed to slowly crawl by, making it feel like time was going to stop entirely? For a brief moment, she thought it actually had. But the blood coming directly from the fresh bullet wound in the man before her told her that it had not. If time had stopped, surely the bleeding would stop, too, right?
She was frozen in fear. Guilt. Shock. Horror.
She had no idea how she was able to finally set herself in motion. It could have been her natural reaction, her body unconsciously taking over in the time of an emergency, but she was undoubtedly sure that it was mostly because she needed to do absolutely everything in her power to stop the young man from dying. This couldn't be happening. Not here, not now.
Not ever.
The raid had started out simple enough: the team splitting up throughout the house to search for the unsub. Somewhere along the line, though, something had gone wrong. And it only went from bad to worse, horribly worse.
She and Reid were near the back of the house, she in the lead. They reached the last bedroom in the hallway. The room seemed empty, so she continued to the adjoining room. It turned out to be a large walk-in closet, again empty.
This had been where things had starting to turn south. She knew something wasn't right as soon as she realized that Reid had not followed her. Alarmed, she exited the closet, gun at the ready. In some ways, she wasn't all that shocked to come back into the bedroom and find that the unsub was in the room; the shocking part was the gun in the unsub's hand being directly pointed at the back of Reid's head.
She tried to calm herself, to push aside the fact that it was her colleague's life in danger and not a random stranger's. That was much easier said than done. She had never fully appreciated before how Hotch or Rossi, or even Morgan, usually did the negotiations. Sure, she had done it before, but once again, this was her colleague. Her friend.
It had been no secret that Reid had been a bit ill towards her once upon a time. She had taken it to the fact that he was just struggling through a difficult time, and she had been the easy outlet to voice his frustrations out on, since she had been a relatively new member of the team at the time. They were past that, though, long past that.
Which begged the question: hadn't the young man been through enough already? She couldn't let Reid be shot right in front of her, not if she could help it. Part of her now wished she had let Reid take the lead, then maybe she would be the one with a gun pointed to her head, and it would be her life at risk instead.
Reid's hands were splayed out at shoulder's height in a form of surrender. The unsub had already forcefully taken his gun and tossed it aside. Reid's body language didn't show any fear, but she still saw fear in his eyes; no matter how brave you were, a gun pointed at your head was going to illicit some amount of fear. But she also saw trust in his eyes, trust that she could take the lead and talk to the unsub, since he was in no position to do so.
Using that as an encouragement, she finally found the ability to talk.
"Put down the gun," she ordered calmly, though she felt anything but.
"I think you should take your own advice, Agent." He uttered the last word with obvious distaste.
"I can't do that," she replied firmly.
"Either you put it down, or your friend here isn't even going to have the chance to know what hit him."
She wasn't going to let herself be the cause of Reid's death, and she knew she had to lower her weapon. What good was her gun anyway when the unsub was using Reid as a human shield, blocking her from a clear shot? She knew she really only had one option. Reid seemed to think otherwise.
"Don't do it, Emily," he pleaded calmly.
"Yes. Don't do it, Emily," the unsub mocked. "See if I care. I have no problem putting a gaping hole in his head."
"Just let him go. Then we can talk about this."
"There'll be no talking about this."
A small movement outside the bedroom door caught her attention. Good. The rest of the team, or at least one of them, knew about the situation. But they were staying out in the hall, avoiding the chance of spooking the unsub by coming in and making themselves known. They were trusting her to be in control of the situation, and would only come in if they felt it was beginning to spiral out of control.
Trust.
God, how could all of them have so much trust in her to do this? Right now, she did not have nearly the same about of faith in herself as they all seemed to be having in her. She needed to focus, though, and ignore her own lack of confidence. If she wanted this to end well, she couldn't dwell on what was at stake.
"I'm not stupid," the unsub continued. He slowly started moving the gun lower. "I know the only way I'm leaving here alive is if I'm in custody." The gun was now between Reid's shoulder blades. "And frankly, I'd rather be dead." The gun reached Reid's mid-back. "Might as well," he stopped the gun at the small of Reid's back, "give you a lasting impression."
"Don't-" she hardly got the warning out before two gunshots were sounded, one right after the other.
The air ripped from her lungs.
There was a brief moment where she froze, which seemed to stretch on forever, before she was able to move. Reid had fallen forward in a crumpled heap to the floor, but not before she had seen a look of shock and pain displayed across his face. The unsub had fallen, too, but she paid absolutely no attention to him.
She rushed forward to Reid. Whether she re-holstered her gun or just plain dropped it, she couldn't exactly recall; she trusted her other team members to have her back if the unsub had survived his rendezvous with a bullet.
Trust. There it was again. That simple sentiment that they all seemed to share with each other. Would Reid still trust her after this?
Would there even be a chance to find out?
Her emergency training kicked in automatically; the panic welling up inside her didn't have a chance to manifest itself. She turned Reid onto his back and immediately applied pressure on his stomach wound with her hands. The bullet had ripped right through, just below where his Kevlar vest would have protected him to some extent. His expression seemed to be a constant grimace of pain, and he was breathing deeply. She was grateful for the fact that he was still awake, and she tried to keep him that way.
"Come on, Reid," she encouraged. "Stay with me," she nearly pleaded.
Again, it was like time had stopped, yet suddenly, she was being led away from Reid and being replaced by paramedics. At some point, Reid had been unable to obey her pleas, and he became limp, unable to feign off the pull of unconsciousness any longer. The paramedics quickly loaded him onto a stretcher and whisked him away.
She couldn't quite recall how she had gotten to the hospital, only a brief image of being in the passenger seat of an SUV filled her mind. She was hardly aware of herself as she washed the blood from her hands and changed her clothes, and now, she was hardly aware of the people sitting around her in the waiting room.
Searching for something to distract herself, her eyes locked onto the nurses and doctors moving about. She wondered how they could handle having people's lives in their hands, but then, had she not been in the same position merely a couple hours before?
Time seemed to slowly inch by, until a doctor finally came out to speak to them. As the doctor told them Reid should be okay, she felt like she finally let out a long breathe she hadn't realized she had been holding since the sound of the gunshots. The relief she felt could have almost made her collapse to the floor. In fact, she probably would have if the doctor hadn't said that they could see Reid, one at a time, and the team practically volunteered her to go first. They seemed to know she needed to see for herself that he was alright.
She made her way down the long hallway to the room the doctor had informed her of. Reid wasn't entirely out of the woods yet, she knew that, but as long as no complications arose, the doctor said he should make a full recovery.
She hesitated as she reached the door to Reid's room. She looked in, seeing the pale frame sleeping on the bed. It was another couple of minutes before she was able to actually walk into the room. She sat down in the chair next to the bed at gently took a hold of his hand.
A single tear slid down her cheek; she had no idea where that came from. Logically, she knew she shouldn't blame herself, but how could she not when she had been mere feet away?
"God, I'm so sorry, Reid," she uttered softly.
She squeezed his hand gently. Though he was not aware to take in the comforting gesture, it was comforting to her to do it. She was surprised, then, when she felt his hand weakly squeezing back.
"S'okay," came his quiet voice. "Not your fault."
"Hey, Reid," she greeted gently. She watched him silently, expecting his eyes to open, but they never did. "Just get some rest, okay?"
A very slight nod from Reid told her he had heard, and a few seconds later, she was sure he was already asleep again. She decided it would be a good time to take her leave and let the others have a chance to come see him. She made her way out of the room and to the others, revealing that he had been awake for a brief moment.
Later, after much persuading that Reid was going to be asleep all night anyway, she headed home to get some rest. She entered her apartment and changed into her pajamas, though she wondered why she even bothered since she knew sleep would not come very easily to her tonight. She sat on her couch, sighing deeply as she leaned back and closed her eyes.
But her eyes shot open again as images of a bloody Reid filled her mind.
She already knew, which she had seemed to know for hours now, what was going to happen now. It seemed like for quite some time, she had been waiting for something to happen, for something to pull at the very last string she had left in her.
She wondered what the rest of the team would say to her if they knew what she was going to do, if they knew she was even thinking about doing it. They would probably say her emotions were running high – especially guilt – and she wasn't thinking rationally. But she was. She had known it would likely only take one more thing to start gnawing at her soul, eating the very last fulfillment of the job away. She was tired of putting forth all of her effort, in hopes of doing some good, only to keep finding more and more disturbing things with each new case and feeling like all that effort was lost.
And this. This had been larger than she would have expected to need to push her over the edge.
She was going to do this, and no one would be able to stop her; come Monday morning, she would do her best to avoid her colleagues as she headed directly to Hotch's office. She would do her best to avoid Hotch's questions and oppositions to her resignation. She would do her best to avoid her colleagues again as she left. She would do her best to ignore their persistent calls, knowing full-well they were going to say.
She would do her best to avoid Reid when he was well enough to leave the hospital and come and try to talk her out of this in person.
She needed them to trust her decision.
Because she needed to move on from the BAU, and the horrors that it brings.
Well, the tragedy is over. The failure is complete. I turn my head and go away. I took my share in this fight for the impossible. ~ Albert Camus