A/N: First I need to apologize to Tigerlily because this is taking way longer for me to finish and it's becoming way longer than I had anticipated. It looks like it's more of a five parter. We shall have to see. I hope you enjoy.
The distinctive click of an empty gun pierced through the still desert air and told both Emily and Booker this wasn't over yet. The injuries sustained in the car crash and dehydration slowed down the man's thought processes and reflexes or Emily would have never made it from the distance she was currently at.
With a loud yell, she ran a few steps and then launched herself at Booker. Without the gun, they were more evenly matched. She had less serious injuries but she had always been a little more sensitive than most to dehydration. She probably would never out run him and she had absolutely no idea if he had an extra clip on him. The only course was to fight it out now and incapacitate or kill him.
In retrospect, it would probably be one of the lamest fights ever recorded. Emily's launch caught Booker off guard. His response time was already slowed so he merely stood there, gaping, when she crashed hard into him. He tumbled backwards and the back of his head connected with a sharp edge of a rock, splitting open his skull. He died instantly.
Emily tumbled off to the side and scrambled to her feet, assuming some weak version of a defensive stance. When Booker simply laid there, she blinked once, twice and then cautiously made her way over to his body. Hesitantly, she remembered what happened after the car crash when she tried to check for a pulse, Emily nudged him with her foot, but he did not move. Still moving cautiously, in case it was a trick, she knelt down and felt for a pulse. There was none. That was when she saw the blood oozing from behind his head. His blank eyes stared sightlessly up into the bright blue sky.
She sat down abruptly, suddenly drained of all energy. Emily felt no remorse for what had happened. Maybe she would later, but right now, she did what had to be done. Besides, she saw what he had done to his victims and knew what he had in store for her if they hadn't figured out he was the unsub. Add to that that he tried to kill her several times today, well, Prentiss wasn't weeping for the man even if she did have sufficient moisture left in her body to do so.
She knew she couldn't stay sitting here by the body, so she slowly and painfully got to her feet. Since she no longer had to worry about Booker following her, she decided to retrace her steps. At least she knew she came from the road. Both her tracks and Bookers were clearly marked in the sand and she stumbled her way back from where she came.
The helicopter was silent as the four men scanned the desert below them for any signs of life. Along with Hotch and Rossi, there was a pilot and an EMT. Should they find Emily, there was plenty of room left in the copter for her to lie flat on a stretcher. Neither the pilot nor medic made any comment about searching an area far from where the rest of the teams were looking.
Rossi also didn't comment, simply keeping his eyes open for any sign of Emily, but he was always aware of his friend. While Hotch sat still, tension and anxiety radiated off of him in palatable waves as he trained his binoculars on the desert floor below them.
They just had to find her, Hotch thought to himself.
For a few seconds, the images he saw of the desert below morphed into memories he had of Emily. That wide smile, those bottomless eyes that can stare down the most depraved of suspects but gently comfort and calm a terrified child, Emily Prentiss was a contradiction in every way, hard and soft, warm and cool, dark and light, all wrapped up in an intriguing, unique package that he realized too late that he had lost his heart to years ago.
He had wasted so much time and now, just when he realized she was the one he truly wanted, Fate was dealing him a cruel hand and taking her away.
Hotch shook his head to will away the memories and focus on the search. He mentally kicked himself for losing concentration for even a second. They could have flown over her and they wouldn't have known because he was distracted. This would not do because right now, it was about saving Emily. It wasn't about him and his feelings and fears of lost chances. He wasn't even sure if she even remotely felt the same about him.
There was only one way to find out and that was to bring her home, and that was what Hotch intended to do, no matter what it took.
Her gait was more of a stagger and stumble at this point and she had fallen to her knees more than once. It became harder and harder to regain her footing. The last time she fell, she couldn't get up again and bowed her head, trying to stop the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her.
"Well, well, well, love, giving up so easily now? Typical."
The familiar Irish brogue sent a chill through Emily's body and she felt herself still.
"You are not here," she rasped out loud.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, Love, you know I'm never far from you."
She could hear someone kneeling down next to her and she smelled the cologne Ian Doyle used to wear. It was a hallucination, it had to be, but she couldn't help turn her head to the side to see.
Emily found herself staring into a pair of familiar, cold blue eyes. He didn't look the way he did when she last saw him. He wasn't the wild, broken and unkept man that Derek had tracked down and arrested. He was the deadly, dashing arms dealer she knew when she was Lauren Reynolds and he stood there now, a mocking look in his eyes as he took in her situation.
"Well, I wanted you to burn in Hell, Emily. This is close enough," Ian said in an easy tone.
"I'm hallucinating you," she growled out.
"Maybe you are. Ahhh, you must have cared for me in some way, Emily. Otherwise why conjure me up in your moment of need?" Doyle queried.
"Maybe so I would get up and get away from you!" she snarled out as she got unsteadily to her feet and took several heavy steps forward.
"You can't run away from me, Emily," Doyle replied as he fell easily into step with her. "I'm a part of you."
"No! You are nothing to me but a past that can never touch me or haunt me again!" she snapped. God, why did her mind do this to her? Why him of all people?
"We know that's not true, love. Stop lying to yourself. You know I'm there with you every night when you close your eyes and you try to sleep. I'm in your mind and I'll never leave." She could almost feel his hot breath in her ear as he whispered. "You'll never be rid of me."
"Go away!" she screamed out as she swung her fist towards Doyle. All she succeeded in doing was to knock herself off balance and once more she fell to her knees, her body protesting at the sudden movement and her injuries reminding her that besides dehydration, she had other physical issues.
Emily bowed her head as her hands fisted through the sand. She can't do this. She can't. She was getting weaker and weaker and it was getting harder and harder to keep going.
"I can't," she whispered brokenly. "I can't."
"Now, that's not the Emily Prentiss I know."
If she had the extra moisture in her body, she would have started crying when she heard the gentle voice. "Matthew," she whispered.
"I'm here, Em," her old friend said in his warm voice. She turned her head and instead of the shell she saw on the cold table in the morgue, she saw the friend she knew in Italy, the handsome, kind boy who refused to let her go through one of the worst times in her life alone. The friend who's life was never the same because of her. Emily had always carried the guilt that she had ruined Matthew's life with her choices. Afterall, he turned his back on the Church because it had scorned her.
"I'm sorry, Matthew," she said in a broken voice through her cracked lips.
He smiled at her. "You know we settled that a long time ago. It was never your fault."
"But you turned away from the Church because of me."
"Yes, but that wasn't what led me down my destructive path. Em, you know better than that. Remember who my parents were! I had a lot of other problems in my life. Whether the Church was in my life or not, it wouldn't have mattered."
"And then I left you," she said in a mournful voice. "After all that help you gave me, I just left you. I didn't support you when you needed me."
"Because I pushed you away-"
"But I should have tried harder! I should have fought you! I shouldn't have given up!" she sobbed out her years of guilt and anguish.
"I never gave you a chance, Em. And then your parents left Italy, sending you to that boarding school in Connecticut. It wasn't your fault. You tried, Emily. I was beyond saving. But you aren't."
"Matthew, I can't…," she moaned as her head sank once again into the sand.
"I've always wondered if you were tough enough for this job, Prentiss. Get on your feet."
She let out a bark of laughter. Of course, who would visit her now and order her about but Aaron Hotchner? She looked up into his sunglass covered eyes, the rest of his face as immobile as granite, the lines just as harsh.
"You should be happy that you were proven right," she wheezed.
"Right?" She could hear him crouch down to her level. "What do you mean?"
"From the very beginning, you've always had your doubts about me being on your team and in the BAU."
"Is that what you think? Then how do you explain me going after you when you resigned? I could have easily let you go if I didn't want you on my team."
"You felt you owed me. Face it, Hotch, you're driven my guilt. You felt guilty."
"Do you think I felt guilty after Doyle?" Hotch's quiet voice asked her. "I wanted you back with us. Demanded they let you back on the team. I never filled you spot no matter how much they pressured me to do so. It's because you're irreplaceable Emily."
"Then you made a mistake to wait for me. I'm leaving Hotch," she gazed dazedly around her. "One way or another."
"Not this way," his voice was hard and became bossy again. "If you leave, you leave the job, you don't leave your life. On your feet."
"I can't," she whimpered.
"Dammit, Prentiss, it wasn't a request, now on your feet!" Hotch's voice was harsh and loud.
Wearily, she got up, thinking dark thoughts about her supervisors imperious and bossy ways. For a moment, she swayed precariously on her feet but took a few wobbling steps forward. She took a deep breath and continued to walk forward at a shuffle, her only company the silent ghost that filled her imagination. For a while, whenever she faltered, one would be there, goading or encouraging her on. A part of her wondered why she would conjure up these three at this time.
"Maybe because you needed all of us, love," Doyle said in a mocking tone.
"I don't need you," Emily snarled at him.
"But we're all a part of you, Emily," Matthew replied in his gentle voice. "Each of us shaped you in some way. Me in your teen years."
"Early in your career, love," Doyle chimed in.
"And me now," Hotch said.
"You're all in my past. Over with," Emily gasped as her steps became even more erratic, weaker.
"Are we, Emily?" Hotch asked in his quiet voice. "Are we all in your past?"
She stopped then and turned to look at the Unit Leader. "Yes, I'm leaving, Hotch."
"The BAU, but are you leaving me?" Hotch stepped towards her, so close she thought she could smell him.
"I don't want to, but, what choice do I have?"
"We always have a choice. Why do you feel you need to leave me?"
"I'm stuck. I don't want my life to just be about this job. I want more. A man to love and who will love me. A home. Children."
"And if I say you could have it if you stayed. Not at the BAU, but stay with me."
She gazed up at him. "Can it really be?"
He smiled at her now, his dimples showing, all the emotions in his heart written clearly in his eyes. "Stay with me, Emily."
"What's that? Circle back around!" Hotch barked out as he caught a glimmer of something. As the helicopter swung back in an arc, he saw the reflection that had caught his eye and something, some shape. "Over there," he indicated with his hand.
The pilot obliged and Hotch sucked in his breath when he recognized the shape. "Emily!"
The second the runners touched the ground, Hotch was leaping from it and running towards Emily, her gold watch had caught a ray of sunshine and was the reflected light he saw from the chopter. He dropped to his knees and brushed her hair from her face. "Emily! Stay with me, Emily!"
