A second later, Prentiss saw Hotch's struggling hands fall limp as he faded into unconsciousness, Ford's thick arm starting to pull him over the rail by the throat without resistance. Finally, with no other choice, she pulled the trigger. The sound of the gunshot cracked through the moaning air, but the cool smile didn't leave Ford's face. Blood began to stream down Hotch's shoulder and arm, and she froze in horror. Her body went cold and the breath disappeared from her lungs. As if in slow motion, Ford fell backwards, dragging Hotch with him, but Prentiss raced forward and grabbed Hotch by the bulletproof vest, and Ford's hand slipped from Hotch as he plummeted from the balcony. As he fell, Prentiss saw the bullet hole in his neck and the river of blood that had soaked both him and Hotch in a matter of seconds. Even from where she stood, six floors up in the middle of a storm, Prentiss heard the sound of Ford's body crack as he hit the ground. She was still holding Hotch upright by his vest; he was barely conscious and his knees were buckled, almost all of his weight on Prentiss.
"Hotch?" She used all of her strength to turn him and prop him against the wall. "Aaron," she said, grabbing his face in her hand, and using the other to stop him falling forwards. "Aaron, say something." He seemed to hear her voice, and suddenly he took a sharp breath and opened his brown eyes. He stared at her breathlessly for a second before straightening himself up with one hand on the balcony railing. He took a few deep breaths and Prentiss was surprised to see a weak smile on his pale lips.
"Nice shot," he croaked. She let out a small laugh that was verging on a sob, and Hotch pulled her tightly into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his back and rested her head on his chest, and they remained in that position for some time, looking over the balcony at the emergency services swarming Ford's body, both of them too shocked and relieved to be concerned that they were overstepping professional boundaries. It was only when Morgan and Rossi came through the archway into the room that they finally stepped apart.
"What happened?" Morgan asked.
"Ford nearly pulled me over the balcony with him," Hotch said, his voice hoarse.
"You're bleeding," Rossi said, nodding at Hotch's arm.
"I hit you?" Prentiss asked, noticing the long tear on the shoulder of his white shirt and an expanding patch of fresh blood.
"It's mostly Ford's blood, you only grazed me." Hotch said.
"Oh Hotch, I'm sorry," she said.
"Don't be," Hotch insisted, inspecting the wound with little concern. "That was a hell of a shot, Emily, I'd be dead if it weren't for you." Rossi and Morgan exchanged looks of mixed admiration and curiosity as if they wanted to ask for details but knew it wasn't the time or the place. All four agents turned at the sound of more footsteps on the stairs to see a couple of paramedics appear on the landing.
"Come on you two," Rossi said. "You should get checked out."
"I'm fine," they said in unison.
"You're both in shock," Rossi insisted, "and you need that graze seen to," he added to Hotch. "No arguments."
Prentiss kept her arm around Hotch as they descended the stairs, under the pretence that she was supporting him, when in reality she wasn't sure her trembling legs would get her to the bottom.
Soon after, Hotch and Prentiss sat side by side in the back of the ambulance, both wrapped in blankets that were meant for shock, but were more useful against the driving rain. Reid was standing just outside, his long hair plastered to his forehead, and he was looking at Hotch and Prentiss expectantly, as if he had just said something and was waiting for an answer.
"What?" Hotch asked, raising his voice over the wind and the approaching rumble of thunder.
"I said, there's no way we can fly in this," he half shouted. "What do you want to do?"
"We'll get a hotel tonight and see what the situation is like tomorrow." Reid nodded and hurried to the relative shelter of the apartment wall to make a phone call, presumably to Garcia.
With a little help from their technical analyst, they moved from their Bureau-approved lodgings to a luxurious hotel and spa for the night. It was close enough to the airport for easy access the next day, but far enough away from civilisation that there was nothing but trees and hills surrounding them. Hotch and Emily had insisted that they weren't taken to hospital, and the whole team arrived at their new lodgings just as it was beginning to get dark. If it hadn't been for the wind howling through the trees and the rain pelting painfully down onto their skin, it would have been idyllic.
They checked in, and Prentiss and JJ headed up to their enormous twin room, equipped with a bathroom that was the same size, if not bigger than the room itself. Prentiss changed out of her rain-soaked, blood-spattered clothes, brushed her teeth in front of obscenely large mirror and let down her hair, which now lay around her shoulders, slightly wavy and still a little damp from the storm. When she was sure JJ wasn't going to come in, she dropped her composed façade and gripped the edges of the sink, taking several long, trembling breaths and trying to stop her hands from shaking. She looked up at her reflection, and saw the fear in her dark eyes, like an imprint of the ordeal on the balcony seared onto her face. She straightened up, reapplied her light-hearted expression and left the bathroom to join JJ.
The team congregated in the hotel bar that evening, sitting in a semi-circle of sofas and chairs around the grand fireplace. Despite the high ceilings and the wind rattling the windows, it was warm inside the old building. Prentiss's hair was now completely dry, and the chill that seemed to have sunk into her bones that afternoon was beginning to dissipate, although it was more than just the weather that had left her tense and shaking. She was curled on the sofa next to Hotch, trying to engage with the conversation, but her mind kept wandering to the families that were never going to find out where their children were buried now that Ford was dead. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn't notice her knees resting against Hotch's leg. Either he hadn't noticed or he didn't mind, but regardless she shifted back in her seat and curled a little tighter, losing herself in her thoughts again, occasionally roused from her reverie by the lights flickering in complaint at the weather.
"Do you think Ford was telling the truth?" Rossi asked. The name brought Prentiss's full attention back to the conversation.
"About what?" asked Morgan.
"About Hotch being his 40th victim. 39 instead of 12 is a huge discrepancy, we can't have been that wrong, can we?"
"It's possible," said Reid. "We still don't know exactly when his first kill was after his father, and we already predicted that the numbers at the crime scenes were a countermeasure to throw us off his real total. There could easily have been that many, maybe more."
"Those poor families," said JJ. Prentiss suddenly found herself on her feet, all eyes on her.
"Emily," JJ said, softly, "I didn't mean -"
"Excuse me," she muttered, hurrying from the room before anyone could notice the tears filling her eyes. She didn't go far, only halfway down the corridor, just out of reach of the interrogative lights of the bar, before she sat down with her back against the wall. She felt uncharacteristically shaken by the day's events, and she couldn't understand why; she had been in high stress situations before, but this one felt very different, and it scared her. Only a few seconds passed before she heard footsteps on the soft carpet, and she didn't even need to look up to know that it was Hotch standing beside her.
"Sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have run out like that."
"Are you okay?" he asked, sitting down beside her, resting his arms on his bent knees and watching her carefully.
"There are 39 families who will never have peace because of me," she said quietly.
"Come on, Prentiss, you know that isn't true. Those families were broken the day Ford took their children. That isn't on you." She didn't say anything; she just continued to stare anxiously at the baseboard of the wall, chewing the inside of her lip. "And besides," Hotch continued, "if you hadn't taken the shot, you'd be planning my funeral right now, not sitting talking to me in the middle of the floor." She felt an half-hearted smile pull at her lips and she turned to look at Hotch, about to speak, but a spot of colour caught her eye.
"You're bleeding again," she said. He looked down at his shoulder where the blood was beginning to show through the gauze dressing wrapped firmly around his upper arm.
"Oh," he said, looking unconcerned. "The paramedics said I'd need to redress it, they gave me extra bandages to do it myself."
"Let me," she said. "I feel responsible." Hotch was about to argue but she cut across him. "Besides, you can't do it by yourself with one arm."
"Okay," he agreed, watching her warmly. "I left it all upstairs, I'll go get it."
"Don't worry about it, I'll come up," she said. "I was going to turn in soon anyway." Hotch stood and offered her his hand to help her to her feet, and they made their way upstairs. It took a few minutes to navigate their way through the long hallways to Hotch's room at the far end of the top floor. Hotch turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open for Prentiss. She stepped inside to see a brightly lit, spacious room, with an unlit fireplace on the wall opposite, and dark wood furniture to match the mantelpiece. A couch and a TV stood facing each other to the right, and another door led off to the bathroom on the left. Prentiss found the small bundle of gauze, bandages and tape sitting on the enormous king sized bed, and sat down on the perfectly smooth sheets, finding that her feet only just grazed the carpet from the tall mattress.
Hotch closed the door quietly behind him, and laid the key on a shiny mahogany table. She patted the space on her left and Hotch sat beside her, pushing his t-shirt sleeve up and over his shoulder so that she had easy access to undo the bandage. She kept glancing up at him to check for any signs of discomfort, worried that she might cause him even more pain than she had already. In the cool light of the bedroom she could see dark red and purple bruises forming in a ring across his neck where he had been dragged and nearly thrown from a balcony. In spite of his injuries, his expression barely changed as he watched her calmly, studying her face and then her hands as she pulled off the gauze, as if captivated. When she saw the wound, her guilt must have shown in her expression, because Hotch pulled his arm gently from her grasp for a moment.
"Prentiss, stop it," he said, holding her gaze firmly. "Either you shot Ford or he killed himself; it was a lose-lose situation. And as for this," he indicated his bloody arm, "this is nothing. I've had more painful injuries playing football with Jack." She sighed and smiled reluctantly.
"Sorry," she said.
"And stop apologising," he said.
"Sorry," she said again, this time with a little smirk. Hotch laughed and shifted back towards her so she could re-bandage the graze. He seemed to be able to read her mind, because the next words out of his mouth addressed the very thing she had been worrying about.
"We'll find some of the kids' bodies," he said. "Maybe not all of them, but we've got the profile, and we've still got to search Ford's house; we'll find something that'll lead us to the burial sites."
"I really hope so," she said, pulling the last piece of tape a little tighter and securing it. "There."
"Thank you," said Hotch, but then there was a silence as they looked at each other. Time seemed to slow again, but this time it wasn't out of fear. Hotch gazed at her, almost as if he wanted to say something else.
"What?" Prentiss asked.
"Nothing," Hotch said, shaking his head. "It's just, I was thinking how much you've changed in the last few years."
"Oh?" Prentiss said, unsure if that was a good thing.
"You've always been an incredible agent, Prentiss. But what you did today, shooting Ford under that kind of pressure… I don't think I could have done it."
"Sure you could," she said. "I've seen you do it, like last year in New Mexico."
"That was a different situation," Hotch insisted. "I kept a cool head because I was saving someone I didn't know; I could be objective. But if the roles were reversed today… if it had been you with the gun to your head, getting pulled over that balcony… God, Emily, I don't know what I would have done." She was a little taken aback to see the genuine fear in his eyes, and seeing the familiar expression, she realised why she had been so shaken by the events on the balcony. She reached out automatically and clasped her hand over his.
Then suddenly they were in darkness as the power lines gave up their fight against nature. They both fell silent and still and, now that she was blind in the dark, her other senses seemed to spike, and she was suddenly very aware of the feeling of Hotch's warm skin beneath her hand. She felt her skin prickle with electricity, every inch poised on the edge of reaction, waiting to feel something.
"Hotch?" she said, but her voice came out in a cracked whisper.
"Emily," he said, his low voice closer to her than she imagined. She found her hand moving up his arm, tentatively at first, feeling the soft material of his t-shirt covering his shoulder and his chest. She felt his breathing, and his hand on her arm as her fingers ran along his cheek, her thumb tracing the edge of his jaw. Then, from nowhere, she felt his hand on her face, and his lips on hers. Her reaction was instantaneous, as if her whole body had lit up; she slid her hands around the back of his neck, her fingertips reaching his hair, and then his arm was around her back. She pulled Hotch towards her until she was leaning back against the thick pillows, and she felt the mattress give as he climbed onto the bed.
And then suddenly they could see again. They drew apart slightly, blinking in the white light, but neither moved from their position. They were both a little breathless, frozen where they lay. Prentiss kept her eyes trained on Hotch's dark brown ones above her, hoping he wasn't about to change his mind now that the atmosphere of darkness was gone. She allowed her eyes to flicker down to his mouth, and that seemed to be all the prompting he needed to resume the kiss that had ended all to soon. The shuddering wind conquered the power lines for a final time and they were plunged into darkness once again.