Emily walked back into the living to see Mick ready to rip someone's head off and she immediately felt the tension in the air. "What's going on?" Mick's demeanor immediately changed but before he could get to Emily, Cooper put a hand on his chest and leaned down to whisper in his ear. "You and I both know that she can sense your mood. If you don't want her to worry, then step outside and take a breath. I'm not completely sure about what's going on here but for your kids' sake, just take a breath." Mick didn't want to listen to a word that Copper had to say but he knew that the man was right. He went to the sliding door and stepped outside. "Does somebody want to tell me what the hell is going on?" Emily snapped when no one would answer her. Prophet grabbed the tablet out of Penelope's hands gently and slowly turned it to face Emily. Emily felt her face pale as she looked at the pictures. "Is this why you're here?" "That's your first question?" Hotch asked with an edge to his voice. Emily's demeanor changed in an instant. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she bit out. "Prentiss. You and your husband are both suspects in these 3 murders. I would like to take you both to the station to answer some questions. Please don't make this harder than it has to be." "You come into my house and accuse me and Mick of a crime and you have the balls to tell me not to make it harder?" Emily went to turn away but Hotch grabbed her arm, "This is not a request. You and Mick are our prime suspects." Emily tried to push Hotch off and he tried to hold on to her tighter so that she wouldn't hurt herself but that all went out the window when Emily lost her footing and hit her wrist on a hard corner of a nearby table so that she wouldn't hit her face.
Mere seconds felt like minutes with the next few moments. Mick heard the commotion and stormed back into the house and upon seeing his wife hit the ground, he lunged directly at Hotch and tackled him to the ground. Cooper and Prophet tried desperately to pry Mick off Hotch as he landed blow after blow. All the noise brought Alicia downstairs and she immediately jumped on Morgan's back as he tried to break up Hotch and Mick. JJ and Garcia attempted to get Emily upright but she pushed the both of them hard, causing them to stumble. Gina and Reid slowly tried to help her but all Emily did was look at the blood running down her wrist. Beth grabbed Alicia around her middle and yanked her off of Morgan. "Alicia stop. Calm down." Beth put more off her bodyweight on Alicia just to keep her still. She looked towards the staircase and saw Luca bawling his eyes. Cooper finally managed to break it up and Morgan helped Hotch to his feet. Hotch wiped the blood from his nose and mouth, "Arrest all of them." "Hotch are-" "Now Cooper! Or do I have to find someone else to do it?" Cooper wanted to say something back but he bit his tongue, knowing that he was the only person to deescalate this situation. "Fine Hotch. Everybody goes in but I'm not putting cuffs on anyone and Emily needs medical."
0000000000000000000oooooooooooooooooooo0000000000000000000000ooooooooooo
At the hospital, everyone was afraid to go near Emily. JJ and Garcia kept their distance for the most part. "What the hell just happened?" Garcia asked as she paced back and forth. JJ shook her head, "Emily has never reacted towards us like that." Garcia kept pacing and repeated, "What the hell just happened?" Neither woman was paying attention to the sound of shoes coming down the hall, "Chaos. That's what the hell just happened." Gina LaSalle said with an irritated glare. "No offense, but you guys have some way of showing Emily that you're still her friends." "Excuse me!" JJ said as she took a step forward. "You really don't want to take it there with me Jareau." "I'm not afraid of you LaSalle." "Ah, so that's your specialty?" Garcia didn't know what was happening but she decided to step in-between the two of them. "What's my specialty LaSalle?" "Deflection and lashing out." "LaS-" Gina cut her off, "You need to ask yourself why everything went the way that it did. You need to ask yourself why your 'friend' didn't tell you about her life after she left the bureau. You need to ask yourself why she pulled away from you. You need to ask yourself what the entire story is behind your dead victims and Emily." Beth came around the corner with an exasperated expression on her face. "Any luck with Emily?" Gina shook her head no, "You may be the only one that can talk to her." "That'll have to wait cause right now I need your help calming down Alicia. She's already hit two nurses." Gina and Beth left JJ and Garcia standing outside of Emily's room. JJ slowly counted to ten before she took a deep breath and went inside of Emily's hospital room as Garcia stood like a statue in the hallway.
Emily was adjusting the bandage wrap on her forearm when she looked up and saw JJ. "What? Is it your turn now?" "Emily I'm not here to fight with you. What's going on? Why are you so pissed at us? Why didn't you tell us you had a family? Just….why?" Emily got up and moved to the other side of her hospital room and sat down in the reclining chair. "Why? JJ, I'm more pissed at you than everybody else." JJ felt as if the air had been knocked from her lungs. She stared, open-mouth, at the woman she considered a sister before tears unwillingly started to well up in her eyes. "What did I do?", JJ asked in a tearful whisper. "You nearly caused my marriage to never happen. When Mick and I started dating, I was honest about the majority of my past as was he. He knew that I'd had an abortion when I was a teenager and I knew that he watched his first girlfriend commit suicide in front of him. He knew that I developed a pretty bad drug problem after that and I knew that a woman he had a one-night stand with tried to kill him when he didn't want to date her. We were both honest about things that we could've kept to ourselves. When Doyle first made his presence known, I was sent a video of me and Mick. It was in our old condo and someone had a laser pointed at the both of us the entire time. Doyle told me that he could've killed us both right then but that it'd be too easy and that I wouldn't suffer enough." Emily watched as JJ sat down on her hospital bed as she continued to talk. "Mick was on a case in Florida and I had been in bed the entire weekend because I got a cold when Morgan and I fell into that lake on the Colorado case. He was in our home and I came out the shower and he was sitting on our bathroom counter waiting for me. I couldn't breathe and felt like I was having a panic attack. He told me that he knew Mick was in Orlando and that he had someone ready to kill him as soon as Doyle gave the go-ahead. He asked me how far was I willing to go to protect the man I loved."
Emily started to cry and the hand rested on her belly started to shake slightly. "I didn't believe, although I should've, that he had someone ready to kill Mick, so he showed me. He had a phone in his hand and asked me again how far was I willing to go to protect the man that I loved. I—I—I—I had sex with him in our bathroom. A bathroom that we butted heads on continuously when we were decorating it. A bathroom that I loved to be in with Mick because we'd relax in our oversized tub for hours on end. A bathroom that always felt empty when Mick wasn't around. I defiled my relationship so that Doyle wouldn't kill him. I felt disgusting, dirty, and worthless after that. Mick came back and I wouldn't let him touch me because I couldn't make myself tell him what I did. I kept telling him that I was contagious and thankfully he got called on another case. I called Clyde and put a contingency plan in place in the event that something happened to me. To my surprise, Clyde told me that Mick had made the same call when we first started living together. Mick may detest Clyde on a personal level, but on a professional one, he respects him greatly. Mick decided that if he ever had to go into hiding, Clyde would pick the place and I wouldn't be lied to. He didn't care about anything else as long as I wasn't lied to. I told Clyde that I wanted to do the same. He and I decided that a safe place for me to go would be Papeete, Tahiti. No one besides Mick and I knew the significance of that particular place. We planned to retire there together when we got older. When everything happened JJ, you decided to put me in Paris. I talked to Clyde and he told me that he pulled you and only you to the side and told you about the plan I put in place; yet, you ignored it and chose to send me to Europe. What sense did that make considering that when Doyle was arrested…it was in his fucking Tuscan villa? YOU chose to make a decision while I was unconscious. You chose to ignore a bulletproof and well-thought out plan that I made ahead of time. YOU chose to lie to my parents and to Mick! Rather than make everyone treat you like shit, I took the blame for faking my death although I was never aware or even had a say-so in that decision. I didn't want the team to hate you because you're the glue that holds the BAU together. I didn't want you to carry that weight, so as usual, I carried it all. I am so thankful that Mick is stubborn as hell because he went to Clyde and they both jumped through hoops and left no stone unturned just to find me. The happiest moment I had was when Mick saw me in that Paris market. I couldn't let him go because I was afraid that it was another dream and that he'd disappear. He saw that I was pregnant and that made me tell him everything. I didn't leave a thing out and we cried together and never let go of one another."
Emily took a moment to compose herself and JJ asked gently, "So Luca is Doyle's?" Emily let out a watery laugh and looked down at her stomach. "Mick and I have always had a very active sexual life. We had sex before he went on the Orlando case. The conception was so close that I had no idea who the father was. Do you have any idea what it's like to feel no connection to a child the entire time that you carried him? I was too afraid to find out who the father was. Mick didn't care, he said that Luca was his regardless of DNA. I still couldn't make myself get a paternity test and my postpartum was really bad. I never wanted to be left alone with my own son and I couldn't even breastfeed him. I pumped my milk and gave him a bottle because I wanted him nowhere near me. What kind of mother does that make me? What kind of person does that make me? When Luca was almost a year old, Mick started freaking out because I still hadn't made progression in bonding with him. We were in Wales for about three weeks before he got fed up and got a paternity test done while I was asleep one afternoon. The same day, I'd decided to go to therapy because I felt like a shell of myself and couldn't take it anymore. I found the results and it was like I could breathe again. Seeing in black and white that my son was Mick's and fought hard to stay alive, in spite of the hellish beating I took from Doyle, proved how strong the three of us were. I still went to therapy and spent 7 months telling every deep, dark secret that I had. I felt free and my relationship with Mick got stronger. It was our first Thanksgiving back in DC and we volunteered at a soup kitchen. There was this teenager, Alicia, that was lingering around but didn't belong there. She eventually told me that she was in the system and that it was easy to sneak out of the group home because no one cared. She met with me one day at a nearby playground and became enamored with Luca. She was very protective and didn't let him wander more than three steps ahead her before she caught him. I was uneasy for a bit but then I realized that she just wanted to love and be loved. When she had to say goodbye to us, the sadness in her eyes did a number on me. I told Mick and he just got up and went banging around upstairs. I was confused and he told me that if we were bringing a child home, then she needed somewhere to sleep."
"That's pretty amazing." "That's just who Mick is. He may people fooled but he's gooey on the inside and has a caring, giving personality. I took a moment and realized that I like my life better without the job being present. I dreaded going to work after the Doyle thing so I gave the Director a bullshit reason of using my skills elsewhere and just left. I didn't and I don't feel bad for leaving, just for not warning anyone. This was the first time that I was truly selfish and put myself first. I deserved that and I wouldn't change a thing from that moment on. I got married and I have a great family. I'll never apologize for that." JJ fiddled with the notepad in her pocket before pulling it out and opening it up. "I'm not ignoring everything that you just told me, but you are still a suspect our murder investigation. I have to ask, what happened between you and our victims?" Emily rolled her eyes and turned her body away from JJ, "Glenn was my training officer, Mackenzie was my PT trainer, and Davis was my supervisor when I worked in Threat-Assessment." "Is that all?" "No. They all raped me and got away with it." JJ bit her lip and slowly looked at Emily, "Em-" "What do you want from me JJ? They got away with it because other people let them. I was a green agent and they had years of great service in their jackets. I did the right thing. I reported it to Strauss and she made me feel like dirt. She said and I quote 'Sleeping your way to the top has seemed to backfire on you Agent Prentiss. This needs to be contained before it causes and unnecessary uproar; therefore, I'm giving you your dream assignment in the BAU. You were never shy about telling us that you wanted the BAU but if this kind of mishap happens again, you're out the bureau. You will be on a team comprised mostly of men and under my supervision, so I'd advise against using your body to further your career.'
JJ's mouth fell open, "I had no idea." "No one did. I wasn't exactly eager to tell anyone else after what she said to me. So, I just dealt with it. Unless you plan on charging me right now, I'm going home and taking my children with me." Emily got up from the chair, grabbed her discharge paperwork, and turned once more towards JJ and said, "I won't shed tears over their deaths but if I did kill them, do you think that you would've found the bodies?" Emily left the room and went in search of Luca and Alicia. When JJ came back into the hallway, the rest of the team plus Cooper and Prophet were standing there. "JJ, what do you think?" Cooper asked as all eyes turned to her. "Emily said that they raped her and that she reported it to Strauss. She said that Strauss swept it under the rug and dumped her in the BAU. She said that if she killed them, would we have found the bodies?" Garcia saw the expression on Prophet's face and called him out, "You know something so spill." "Mick said what we already know, that he's a work of art with a sniper rifle. He also said why would he resort to something so messy when he can do damage without breaking a sweat if he's got a rifle."
Morgan let out a breath, "We never told Mick or Emily how they were killed, so how did he know it was messy?" "So my original assessment stands, Emily and Mick are both suspects. Our biggest problem is figuring out which one of them is covering for the other." Hotch said as she put the ice pack back under his eye. Beth, Gina, and Reid came down the hallway and the group relayed what they just discussed. Reid seemed almost hesitant, so Beth spoke up, "Alicia recognized our three vics from different places but only Davis, Emily's old supervisor, actually approached her and talked to her. He, obviously, also experienced the most gruesome death of the three." "What did he say to her?" Morgan asked. "She wouldn't say but she said that she didn't tell Emily because she'd lose it." Gina said. "Alicia obviously has anger issues from the way she attacked Morgan. She also seems willingly to do whatever it takes to protect her family. I think it's safe to say that-" "Say what?" Cooper barked out as his voice rose. Hotch put a calming hand on his shoulder but it was shrugged off. "It's not enough that you're all accusing two people I consider friends of murder, but you also created quite the shit show today. Enlighten me Reid, it's safe to consider what?" Reid looked visibly shaken at how aggressive Cooper was being and speech failed him in that moment. Beth stepped forward and gripped Cooper's right wrist before speaking, "Sam, it's safe to say that Alicia's a suspect too. That's the conclusion that Reid came to. Let's get some air." Everyone watched as the two walked away and Gina and Prophet quickly followed suit.
Rossi narrowed his eyes, "Don't get me wrong, I already hate this case but does it seem that Cooper's team is quite overprotective?" "That's a safe conclusion to make. Did anyone else see how Beth seems to be the only one able to calm everyone down today? I mean Cooper was ready to take Reid's head off. Did everybody see the way that Cooper relaxed when she touched him?" Morgan asked.
"Cooper's team isn't telling us everything. Another body was just found." JJ said as she walked towards the parking lot.
