Taking a deep breath in and then exhaling, Emily closed her eyes, bit the bullet and opened the door to the bull pen, where she could see the rest of her team chatting away happily about their weekends, having not noticed her presence yet.
She slowly walked towards them, trying to prolong the inevitable.
"Em!" Garcia exclaimed when she noticed Emily approach, leaping up from her position on Morgan's chair and launching herself at Emily, who on instinct dug her feet in to the ground, having experienced many of Garcia's whirlwind hugs before.
"Hey, Pen." She greeted softly, before glancing at the rest of the team once Garcia pulled away. "Hey guys."
They all stared back at her, each one with a different level of shock on their faces.
Emily sighed. She knew it was bad. Not even the copious amounts of concealer she had used this morning could cover up the bruises that extended from her right cheek, over her jaw and down to her neck. She was wearing the highest necked top she owned, and even that couldn't cover them completely. She was also finding it increasingly harder to disguise the limp on her left foot.
"Emily, what happened?" JJ asked, rising to her feet, a look of genuine concern written all over her face.
Emily shook her head, her defense plans ready to go. "Nothing, honestly." She insisted, laying her bag down under her desk and taking a seat. She quickly let her eyes roam over the room, taking in everyone that was in and out, making sure there were no potential threats- it was natural for an FBI agent to do this.
"Seriously, Em? You work with a bunch of profilers. Give us some more credit."
"Ugh, fine." Emily sighed. "I was walking home Friday night and someone tried to get my bag. It's okay, though, I fought him off; everything's okay now."
There were a few moments of silence before Morgan spoke up.
"Looks like you put up one hell of a fight." He commented, clocking the bruises on her face, which although faded, were no doubt probably more prominent without makeup.
Emily scoffed and gave him a small side smile- it was about all she could muster. "'Course I did. You should see the other guy."
This seemed to break the tension in the room, as everyone seemed to relax. A few people chuckled, and everybody resumed their positions at their desks, finishing off paperwork. However, Emily could still feel JJ's intense gaze on her back, and she knew that the blonde profiler hadn't bought her story. However, she didn't think she could deal with a whole explanation right then, so she chose to ignore it, making a point of looking extra focused on the new stack of paperwork that presumably Hotch had left on her desk.
It wasn't until later, when Emily decided to stretch her muscles and help herself to coffee, that JJ eventually managed to talk to her.
"Hey, Em." She said casually, as if she hadn't already been making her own coffee when she saw Emily coming and deliberately took her time pretending to be getting the perfect cream-to-coffee ratio mastered.
Emily looked at her suspiciously. She knew that JJ didn't even take cream in her coffee, claiming that to be a profiler was to have the need of pure, undiluted caffeine. "Hey, Jayje." She greeted her.
JJ smiled at Emily's nickname for her. "How are you doing? That bruising looks painful."
Emily sighed. "It's honestly not as bad as it looks."
"Well it looks pretty bad. And that's with you trying to cover it up."
Emily rolled her eyes. "Geez, thanks. Kick a girl when she's down, why don't you?"
They both chuckled lightly before JJ leaned in closer, lowering her voice so that only the two of them could hear it. "Are you going to tell me what actually happened?" She asked.
Emily's eyes widened in fake shock, having prepared herself for no one to believe her. She had saw this coming a mile off, especially from JJ, who seemed to know her better than anyone. "I told you," she mumbled, "some dickswab tried to get my bag, and I fought him off. He got in a good few punches, but he still ended up worse off."
JJ was silent for a moment, in disbelief at Emily's blatant lie. She knew that out of all of the members of their BAU team, Emily was perhaps the one who had built her walls the highest. It did hurt though, that she was being blocked out.
"Bullshit." She sighed, deciding to cut straight to the point and call Emily out.
"Excuse me?" Emily gasped, not having expected JJ to be quite so forward.
"Bullshit." JJ repeated, more confidently this time. "I'm not going to push you, but I know that's not all that happened. So whenever you want to talk, I'm here." She said with a note of finality, and walked away, giving Emily her space.
Emily stood there for a few seconds, ever so tempted to call JJ back over and explain everything. But then she closed her eyes, and as normal, she saw the events of Friday night replay themselves in her head, and she shook her head to dispel them. No, she decided. She couldn't tell JJ. She couldn't bear for the other woman to know how weak she had been... How she hadn't been able to fight him off.
Heading back over to her desk, she continued doing her paper work, keeping her head down and avoiding the curious looks that Reid kept giving her, having witnessed her and JJs heated conversation from across the room.
It had just approached 12pm and the team were beginning to think about lunch, and that they may possibly have a calm day that ended in time- a rare occasion- when both Hotch and Garcia entered the bullpen, Garcia clutching a hefty case file and Hotch looking, as per usual, solemn.
There was a simultaneous groan from the team.
"A new case?" Emily questioned.
They both nodded in confirmation. "A series of murders in downtown LA." Hotch elaborated, beckoning for the team to join them in the meeting room.
As Garcia began the process of presenting the case, Emily felt the never-ending waves of anxiety and nausea in her stomach increase as the details of the murders were revealed- women, all in their mid-to-late thirties, all violently raped and tortured before being murdered. Every single one of them was brunette, and she could have sworn that one of them looked like her.
She was a hundred miles away as the images of the tortured bodies appeared on the screen, sending images of that night through her head, her own screams, his rough hands...
"Prentiss, what do you think?"
She was brought back in to reality with a painful jolt. She shook her head, dispelling any negative thoughts. Taking a second, she recounted what information she had taken in. "Umm... Most likely male. All of these victims resemble each other, so there might have been someone in his life whom he resented with a similar appearance. He's angry, too. His brutality and lack of technique show that much." She listed off.
She was relieved when Hotch nodded and made a note on his tablet of her comments. She did the same, focusing on putting her statement in to as many words as possible to prolong the moment where she would have to look back up at the screen.
Thirty minutes and a brainstorm session later, the team were grabbing their go-bags and preparing to make their way to the run way to board the jet. After confirming with her neighbour, Brianna, that Sergio would be well cared for in her absence, Emily made to join the rest of the team on the jet.
She made a point of sitting as far away from the team as possible, placing her bag and jacket on the seat next to her to make sure that it couldn't be occupied. She paid little attention to what was going on over the ten minutes that it took for everyone to board and for the jet to take off.
Once everything had settled down and the jet reached cruising height, the deep-set exhaustion finally started catching up to Emily. Between the dull rumble of the plane's engine and the pleasant feeling of the cool glass of the window against her bruised face, combined with the fact that she had slept all of two hours over the past three days, it wasn't long before she found herself drifting off.
The room was dark, the outlines of various objects in her room barely decipherable through the grainy darkness.
Although she was hardly able to see, she could feel nothing but a deep, searing pain, most likely what had woken her up, spreading from her cheekbones to her forehead.
It was then that she saw him. A dark, hooded figure had been standing just outside her line of sight. He was perhaps the only thing in the room that she could see clearly, despite him being clothed in black. Although she couldn't see his eyes, she saw the half –smile of his mouth, an intimidating kind of smirk that made her feel sick to her stomach.
Her vision was blurred as her eyes watered from the pain that was radiating through her face, but she could see him coming closer, reaching to wrap his hands around her throat...
Closer, closer...
Across the jet, Morgan and JJ were inattentively watching Reid and Rossi go head to head in a game of chess. While Reid and Rossi were extremely focused and taking the whole things too seriously, neither Morgan nor JJ were paying too much attention.
Catching JJ casting another worried glance at Emily, Derek spoke up. "You're worried about her." He said. There was no question in his voice, just stating what was obvious.
JJ scoffed. "Of course. Look at her." She said quietly, and they both looked over at Emily, who was sleeping soundly on the other side of the jet. Her bruises were visible from where they sat and they could clearly see the way that her arm sub-consciously wrapped itself around her body, protecting both herself and her rib cage. "There's no way that it was just some guy who tried to steal her bag and she fought him off."
"Why do you think that?" Morgan asked, although he agreed with the blonde. There was something different about Emily's usual composed manner, something missing.
"Did you see the look in her eyes?" JJ asked, her voice shaking slightly. "Normally there's this spark, this playful wisdom... But there's nothing there now. And did you see the way she flinched away when you went to wrap an arm around her shoulder earlier? That's not Emily."
Morgan nodded. Just before they had boarded the jet, as they were walking on to the runway, he had casually gone to sling an arm around both JJ and Emily's shoulders. While JJ had made no reaction, being used to Morgan's flirty nature, Emily had flinched violently, ignoring their questioning looks before quickening her pace and hurrying on to the jet.
"Yeah, something's definitely up. But you know Prentiss, no one can force her to tell us anything. She'll do it in her own time.
"Yeah." JJ said, although not entirely convinced. She wanted to badly to believe that everything was okay, but she knew it wasn't. She, out of everyone on the team, was probably the person that new Emily the best, and she wasn't entirely willing to simply wait for Emily to open up- because judging by Emily's past records, she could be waiting a while.
Her thoughts were interrupted, however, when hurried movement caught the corner of her eye. She glanced in the direction it was coming from, and she could see Emily thrashing about in her sleep. She and Hotch made eye contact, having a silent conversation with their eyes. JJ nodded and rose from her seat, waving Morgan back down when he started to do the same.
As she approached Emily, it broke her heart to see tears forming and clinging to her friend's eyelashes before they ran down her cheeks. It was strange to see Emily cry- she could count on one hand the number of times the other agent had every let her guard down in front of anyone, which was how she knew that something must be seriously wrong with her friend. She ran over the pros and cons of waking someone up from a nightmare in her head, and was undecided.
However, when Emily let out a soft whimper and hit her arm roughly off of the table, she decided that it would do her more harm than good to stay asleep. So, she picked up Emily's jacket and bag from the chair and placed them carefully on the table, before taking a seat next and laying a gentle hand on Emily's shoulder.
"Em, it's only a dream. Wake up." She murmured softly in to her friend's ear, using her free hand to gently stroke Emily's hair, as if calming a child. She continued to do this until, eventually, Emily's actions slowed and her eyes snapped open, her breathing erratic.
Emily's heart was racing and her breaths burned in her chest as her lungs took in the much-needed air. Her eyes darted around the room, more tears forming as she slowly came to the realisation of where she was and what had happened.
"Are you okay, Em?" JJ asked her softly, wiping a tear from her friend's cheek and backing away quickly when Emily flinched violently at the close contact.
"I'm fine." Emily murmured, clearing her throat, which had become scratchy. She noticed that she was cowered against the seat of the plane, with her arms wrapped around her body. She sat up straighter, blood rushing to her
Deciding that she needed some space, away from everyone's prying eyes, she excused herself and stood up to go to the toilet, working hard to prevent herself from running.
Once Emily had exited, the team looked at each other with worry in their eyes, wanting nothing more than to help their friend.