Morgan's whole world was spinning. The room was going in and out of focus, and he found he had to close his eyes to keep himself from throwing up.
His hands were tied behind him, at least that's what he thought – he had yet to fully open his eyes. It all seemed like some weird dream, like all he had to do was pinch himself and he'd wake up and everything would be normal.
Blinking rapidly, he noticed a wall in front of him, four screens on it, side by side.
Morgan tried desperately to clear his mind so that he could see what was on the screens. They were pictures, people – it was getting clearer now, but he still couldn't tell.
All of a sudden, he heard a voice behind him. He tried to turn his head towards it, but that just brought a new wave of nausea.
"Long time no see Morgan.", the woman said.
Derek would recognize that voice anywhere. It was his partner – the woman he had trusted his life to countless times. But no, it couldn't be.
"Elle?", he said, squeezing his eyes shut.
She moved to stand in front of him, gun in hand. She had changed – her hair was now in a bob just above her shoulders, and she had lost a lot of weight. But there was a different look in her eyes too; it didn't look like the woman he had known.
But when he opened his eyes, he found he couldn't focus on her much. Because he could just make out Reid on one of the screens on the wall behind her, stumbling lightly, trying to find a way out of the tiny white room he was confined to. Derek could see Rossi, propped up against the wall on another screen, eyes just barely fluttering open. All he saw on the third screen was JJ's petite form in a heap on the floor, back to the camera.
Derek looked over to the last screen and saw Emily, hands chained to the wall of her room. She was pulling on the chains with no avail, trying to get further than two feet from the wall.
Looking back to Elle, Derek noticed the hint of a smile on her face as she saw him realize what was happening.
"Where's – where's -", Derek tried to say, but it seemed he couldn't form a coherent sentence because of the pounding in his head.
"Penelope?", Elle said, her smile turning into a deathly glare. "I know she was always your favorite. But don't worry, she's safe. She'll be better off after this is over anyway."
He tried to zero in on what she was saying, tried to understand what the hell was going on. But it proved difficult when the only thing he could focus on was Reid stumbling around his room like a lost puppy and JJ laying there, unmoving.
"H- Hotch?", he just managed to utter out, wondering what the hell she had drugged him with.
Elle leaned over to him, putting her face near his, toying with her gun. He swallowed, but kept a brave face as he saw her hand linger on the trigger.
"He's on his way, don't you worry."
Derek was almost taken aback by the look that crossed her face. It was a look he had seen many times before, no doubt. But only on killers, only on monsters. He just couldn't wrap his mind around Elle, the person he used to trust impeccably, his friend, could be capable of that look - could be capable of this.
"Why are you doing this?", he said, his voice slightly breaking on the words as he saw Emily tug at the chains one last time and throw her hands up in frustration, sitting up against the wall. Finally he saw her face – the black eye and cut lip, and he couldn't keep the anger out of his voice.
Suddenly, Elle was close to him again, her face almost touching his.
"Why? You wanna know why, Derek? Damn, I thought you'd understand!", she raised her voice, slamming her hand down angrily on the arm of his chair.
"Elle, listen I know that how things with you worked out weren't ideal, but -", he tried to reason with her, just like he did with UnSubs. She was an UnSub now – he had to wrap his mind around that.
"Weren't fucking ideal Derek? You and me both know it was all Hotch's fault! It ruined my life!" She was screaming now, gripping her gun dangerously tightly in her hands.
"Yes but now you're turning into the very same people we try to catch!", Morgan raised his voice to match hers, cursing himself for letting his anger show. He opened his mouth to say something again, to redeem himself, but before he could, she raised her gun and hit him on the side of the head.
His world spun once again, and he could barely hear her when she told him to get up and practically dragged him out of the chair.
Derek found it hard to even walk as she pushed him out of a metal door and into a hallway, opening another door and pushing him into a new room. He just leaned against the wall, closing his eyes as the door slammed shut. He was just about to give in to the blackness when he heard a voice that snapped him back to reality.
"Oh my god Morgan, are you okay?"
He just managed to open his eyes long enough to see Emily stretching her hand out to him, but still a few feet away.
"Derek, come on, move over here. Please.", she motioned with her hand as she cursed the stupid chains that kept her away from him.
He didn't look like he heard her, so she repeated his name louder. She knew that the worst thing for him would be going unconscious right now.
"Derek, come on, please, just open your eyes."
His eyes half opened and slowly he stood up, supporting himself on the wall and took the three tentative steps toward her before falling on the ground again.
She gasped as she looked at the bleeding wound on his head. He seemed to be floating in and out of consciousness every second, which scared her to no end.
Taking off her blouse, she was suddenly thankful she had worn a t-shirt underneath. She scrunched it up and pressed it to Derek's wound, putting his head on her lap.
After a minute, he seemed to sober up a little.
"Emily, what happened to you?", he said, his voice hoarse.
"I- I don't know.", she responded as she tried to put the pieces of her broken memory together. "I woke up in a car, but before I could register anything, she knocked me out again.", she motioned to her black eye.
A look of concern, like always, flashed across Derek's face, but soon it was gone, replaced instead by pure hurt.
"It's Elle.", he said, the look in his eyes more broken than she'd ever seen.
"I know Morgan.", she tried to convey sympathy as best as she could. She couldn't imagine how terrible it would be to have someone you once trusted turn on you like that.
But she had done it to Ian, she couldn't help thinking. She had made him trust her, love her, and then she'd turned on him. She was just as bad as Elle.
"Where are the others?", she asked then, desperate to get her mind off of her own demons.
"JJ, Reid and Rossi are here, all in separate rooms. She has video surveillance. You're the only one with the chains though.", he said, sitting up. "JJ seemed to be in pretty bad shape – I think she was still out. Reid and Rossi were awake though. Ell-", he started, but stumbled on her name. "She said Hotch was coming."
"Garcia?", Emily asked, holding her breath.
"She's safe.", Derek responded, but that hint of doubt and betrayal was still imbedded in his voice. Emily breathed out a sigh of relief and kept pressing on his head with her shirt, the material now soaked a deep red.
"What does she want?", Emily continued, hitting his arm lightly when he tried to pull away.
"I have no idea."
They both looked away for a second, both knowing that much couldn't be said with her no doubt listening. Elle was the enemy now, the UnSub. Usually, they would try to profile. But Derek realized that profiling might be just what they needed right now.
"So, why only chain you up? We were all drugged as far as I know.", he said, nodding at her to follow his lead. Of course, he knew Emily would understand what he meant.
"I don't know, maybe I was the biggest threat to her? I took her place, after all." Emily said, catching Derek's drift.
They needed to show that they were going to treat her just like they treated the killers they worked with every day. They needed to plant the idea that she was just another monster to them in her head. Maybe then she'd make a mistake.
Derek winced lightly at the pain, but continued.
"Probably. So, a part of this was maybe about you."
Emily looked down for a second, recalling something Derek had said.
"You said she told you that Hotch was 'coming'?"
"Yeah. I'm guessing this is some kind of ransom, a power play."
"So he wants him to come to her – she wants to strip him of his dignity and get revenge."
There was a silence then, both of them absorbing what Emily had just said. They were both hoping that Hotch wouldn't come – that he wouldn't give her exactly what she wanted, but they knew he would. Hotch would do anything to protect the team.
"You said everyone had their own room right? Why take you out first, and then put you in my room? Why put us together?", Emily said after a couple minutes.
Derek thought about this, and realization dawned on him. He tilted his head back and hit it against the wall, wondering how the hell he hadn't noticed what Elle was trying to do.
"She thought I would understand why she was doing this. She wanted to see my reaction to see if I would help her!", he said, disgusted.
"Alright, but why room us together?"
"Maybe she didn't have enough space?", Derek said, but all three of them knew that that was bullshit.
She'd put them in the same room to see how they acted with each other. She was a profiler, after all. She'd put them together to see how they talked to one another, to see how much they cared – because she wanted to know if Emily was a better partner than she had been.
It's human nature, really, to feel a little bit jealous. To wonder if you had been good enough.
And Emily and Derek had both knowingly fallen right into that trap. They'd shown her exactly how much they cared, and it was going to come back and bite them in the ass eventually.
Derek looked down at her hands then, which already had dark red sores where the handcuffs were.
"Emily, you've really gotta stop pulling on those.", he said, lifting up her wrist gently and observing the wounds.
She rolled her eyes at him and cracked a little smile, attempting to maybe restore some normalcy.
They just sat there, leaning against each other, Emily applying pressure to the wound on the side of his head.
After a while, Emily felt Derek's head droop on her shoulder.
"Morgan, Morgan!", she panicked, shaking him lightly.
He couldn't fall asleep now – he probably had a concussion, maybe even worse.
Moving his head back onto her lap, she patted his face lightly and repeated his name until he fully opened his eyes again.
"Hey, come on, stay awake... Alright, let's talk. About anything you want.", she said in a futile attempt to get him back into reality. Maybe, just maybe, if he could focus on something else, he wouldn't slip away. She would do whatever she needed, she would not let him die.
"Tell me about Paris.", he said after a second, his voice weak, but his eyes wide open, wondering.
She took a deep breath and started – because she would, if it meant keeping him or the rest of the team alive. She would do whatever it took.
[This idea kind of came from all the tumblr confessions about wanting Elle to come back as an UnSub.
Hope you enjoyed the first chapter, and I promise there will be more of the team later on... Reviews make my day(: ]