Chapter Eight: March 28, 2007 – June 14, 2007

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Room 17B. March 28, 2007. 23:19.

From her seat on the balcony, Emily can see him sleeping in the rich moonlight let into the room by the open drapes. Sprawled in the ruffled bedcovers, sheets around his bare body and belly down, arms thrown up over his head like he's protecting himself from what lurks in the dark. As her cigarette burns down, she watches the slow shift of his breathing and wonders what brought his life here intersecting hers, what brought him to this hotel room with the broken facsimile of what used to be a woman.

He rolls, eyes flickering open and darting right to her, a sleepy kind of confusion around his mouth. She keeps staring, uncaring of what he thinks of her until he slides out of the bed and walks over, opening the sliding door and leaning out without a care for his nudity. He's thicker around the middle than Spencer is, equal amounts of muscle and fat but leaner in the legs and arms. Darker skin and a lighter smile.

"Problem, sweetheart?" he asks in that Southern drawl that had drawn her eyes to him three hours ago in a nearby bar. "Not the cuddling sort?"

She pulls on the smoke with one hand to her mouth, using the other to tug her bathrobe tighter so he can't see what Hankel did to her. There's a tremor in her arms and a shake to her hands, her whole body beginning to betray her.

"Don't call me sweetheart," is all she responds, refusing to meet his eyes. Sex makes her feel normal; it also makes her feel exposed.

"You wouldn't give me a name. What else do you want me to call you?"

To that, she doesn't answer.

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Room 17B. March 28, 2007. 07:23.

She doesn't sleep that night. She can't. Not with a stranger in the room. Strangely, she doesn't want to kick him out either. He's the first person she's let close, physically or otherwise, since Spencer had walked into Hell and pulled her screaming back to earth—and his presence, as much as she resents it now that the sex is done with, makes her feel bizarrely safe.

Not safe enough to sleep though.

But, as though she's making him uncomfortable with everything she is right now, he leaves anyway. By the time the sun is leaking up outside, leaving her alone with her demons, the other side of the bed is cold and Emily can't stand to be near it anymore with the evidence of what they've done to each other still on the sheets and in the air around her.

She showers. Twice. Checks her cell and deletes the three messages from Spencer and one from JJ without opening them. Sends a text back to her therapist requesting a cancellation of tomorrow's appointment. When that's done, she showers again and this time makes sure that she uses the rough hotel sponge to viciously sluice away the dead and dying skin and scabbing from her thighs, scrubbing until her legs are red and bleeding once more. It feels like winning, in a way, like she's forcing her body to reject Hankel's hands on her.

She does the same to her chest, even though that hurts even more and she's almost crying by the time she reaches where his lash had fallen over her breasts. Exhausted and bleeding and triumphant despite that because she hadn't stopped when it had started hurting, she turns off the taps and sits motionless in the bottom of the shower thinking about the day ahead and every day ahead of that.

There are options, Emily knows. Plenty of options. She could reconfirm her appointment and see the therapist Hotch mandated and who she hates. She could ring Hotch, again, and plead her case for reinstatement. She could visit her mother. She could answer one of Spencer's calls before he goes manic with worry.

But all she is is tired. Until she beats the nightmares that refuse to let her sleep alone or with a stranger, she's never going to be able to function efficiently enough to claw her way back onto the team. And if she doesn't get a handle on it soon, she's sure they'll just replace her permanently.

Her cell hums. Another message from Spencer, likely on his way to work.

She deletes it and goes to her bag where she knows exactly what she needs to function is hidden within. Just for today. Just so she can sleep.

Just so she can get her job back and her focus and her life.

And not once does she admit that she's only surviving because Hankel showed her how.

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Room 17B. April 11, 2007. 18:30.

After she's reinstated, it becomes a ritual. Emily finds that she's at good at flirting with addiction as she is at most everything else. It's almost frightening, actually, how easily she adapts her life to making sure she fragments a section of herself into this same room with a carefully measured dose to let her sleep without the nightmares that eat away at her ability to pretend to be okay.

But as long as she keeps this Emily, the one who signs in with a fake name and only ever brings strangers here, separate from Emily Prentiss who went through a terrible ordeal but is recovering spectacularly, really amazing—well, so long as she manages that then she's sure that's all she needs.

She overcompensates at work to quiet the soft voice of guilt telling her she's lying to them all. She pushes Spencer away, mostly because he's too perceptive and she's too careful but also because she can barely stand to be naked in front of strangers now, let alone him. He's always been able to read her and she refuses to be read right now, like he'll taste her betrayal on his tongue when he kisses her or feel the way she's shattering when she trembles under his hands.

Tonight, she's high and the man with her is a sensational kind of rough. He's not scared to push her down and she's sedate enough to go along with it so long as he gets her off. With the drugs silencing the demons Hankel poured into her brain and the physicality of this coupling exhausting her body, she's looking forward to a long sleep to start off the week—it might even keep the demons quiet for a few days, putting off the day until she needs to return.

But then, while she's drifting under this stranger's hand, he undoes her shirt and pulls it back. If she'd been more awake, she'd have stopped him. As it is, he stops himself.

"Fucken hell," she hears him say distantly, a sick jolt in her gut rocketing her up to pull her shirt closed and tuck her shoulders in. "The hell did that?"

His hands are rough, coarse and bitter, but his eyes are so worried for her in that second that she wants to throw up.

"Nothing," she lies, pulling the shirt tighter yet until she can feel the raw skin tearing under the pressure. They should be healed by now, said the doctors she'd seen about them right before she'd refused to return: should be healed, they'd said, if she'd just leave them alone in order to do so. "It's nothing. Don't stop, come on. The hell are you here for if you're not going to put out?"

But he sits back on his heels and frowns at her, not at all the kind of man she'd expected when she'd propositioned him after—apparently, incorrectly—reading him as the kind of man who wouldn't give a shit about her. "Got a sister works with some people," he grunts out, his dick soft now and his eyes still disgustingly concerned. "Helps people out, girls mostly, those getting knocked about at home. Could call her, if you—"

She's up, standing in the bare air with her shirt still pulled tight and her pants still on and the drugs not helping at all, now.

"Get out," she snarls, feeling her emotions catch and tangle up in a horrible twist of feeling in her brain. "Get out! Now!"

He leaves, apologising as he goes. That doesn't stop her slamming the door behind him and going for the shower, desperate to wash him from her too.

On her way, she passes her cell. Six missed calls, seven messages. All from the same number.

She ignores them all.

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Room 17B. June 1, 2007. 19:04.

They don't suspect at work. Her professional life is intact, with glowing reports from the Bureau mandated psychologists assigned to monitor her and with Hotch finally letting her go back into the field without him hovering nearby. Spencer, eventually, gets the message and stops calling. Their desks beside each other in the bullpen become quiet as he stops trying to drag her into conversation, finally accepting that what they once were died on the floor of Hankel's shack. Following his lead, the rest of the team accept that she's coping on her own and stop trying to drag her out for drinks or for 'girl's nights' at the bar.

On this night in that same hotel room, the man she's with hits her. She could put him on his ass. She could—he's a skinny kind of fat and off his face too, and she's stronger than him. She could give everything he's given her back and then some, before arresting him for striking a federal agent.

She doesn't. She takes it. They still have sex and it's better than it should be.

Her professional life is intact and the wounds on her legs and chest have healed, but she knows that something inside her is forever broken and there's no fixing it.

At least this man understands that too.

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Room 17B. June 14, 2007. 18:32.

There's a knock at the door this night.

"Ignore it," says the guy she's with tonight, a desperate pick goaded by the fact that her dealer has vanished and she's had to resort to dodgier methods. At least when the person she's fucking is using too, she doesn't have to hide the marks. "Come on. Let's get this on, right, babe?"

And he bares his teeth in what she guesses is supposed to be a smile from where she's sitting on the edge of the bed feeling a little too messed up for the amount she'd taken.

The knock comes again. The man swears. Because he's annoying her, she gets up and answers it.

Boy oh boy, does she regret that.

For the longest moment of her life as she stands there staring with him staring back, she wonders if this is it. Is it over? This careful dance of functional inadequacy she's been engaging with since that night?

It feels like it's over, and that's almost a relief even though she knows her life is over with it.

"Get the fuck back in here, come on!" snaps her delightful companion. "Fuck!"

Spencer raises an eyebrow, distaste sketched across every line of his expression. Emily just clings to the door and tries to focus on not looking stoned, all of her tumultuous emotions giving way to raw dread.

"You need to leave," she manages to rasp out, but it's too late.

He's looked at her arm. She watches like it's slow motion the way his throat bobs as he swallows hard; she watches as that distaste turns to a deep sadness that makes him look older than he is.

She watches as all of that vanishes and turns him into a younger Hotch, fiercely bland and without emotion betraying him. Fascinated by that shift because she's not sure she's ever seen him like this, she doesn't stop him when he pulls her fingers from the door and steps around her, into the room without closing it behind him.

"Who the fuck are you?" the man on her bed asks, lurching upright with his own expression a confused kind of angry. "If you're her husband, I didn't know shit so deal with your bi—"

"Get out," says Spencer with that same bland ferocity in his voice. He stares the man down without reacting to his spluttering anger, his credentials in his other hand. The man, upon seeing them, goes white. "Now."

He goes.

Emily doesn't say a word, just stands there shivering as her the man vacates the room with a speed that's impressive, Spencer closing the door gently behind him. There's a terrible silence.

"How long have you known?" she finally manages without looking at him, her gaze locked on the floor by her feet.

"I didn't know," Spencer responds quietly. "I suspected. That suspicion was confirmed when you let me walk in and dictate your companion without a fight. You've never been that passive before."

Her head jerks up, leaving her reeling a little. For a second, there's a spark of something in her that feels like who she used to be—then it fades and leaves her drained.

"I guess this is it," she says with a low bark of laughter. "Going to get me fired, Spencer? Going to lecture me like that sanctimonious asshole Hotchner? I'm sure a heart-to-heart will fix everything that's wrong with me, that's for fucking—"

"Where are the drugs?"

The words choke. She might be caught, but that doesn't mean she's ready to show him the evidence of just how broken she is. Knowing is one thing. Seeing is another.

Maybe he sees her eyes flick to the phone, or maybe he knows that she'd do anything to get him out of here before he sees, because he cuts her off midway. Suddenly, his arms are around her and she laughs for a second, because it's hilarious that he thinks he can take her, until she realises that she doesn't have the strength anymore to fight him. And it's the cruellest of betrayals that he scoops her up like she's a cat that's made a mess and takes two easy steps despite her struggling weight to dump her on the bed. Gently, and with one hand quick to curl behind her head to stop her neck from jolting.

"Bathroom?" he asks her, breathing a little roughly and with that same focused expression. "Is that where they are?"

She goes for it, rolling out of his grip and lunging at the door.

He catches her easily. Maybe that's a clue that she's not as good at hiding this as she'd hope, because four months ago she could kick his ass. As it is, she can't even stop him from tossing her back onto the bed with an oomph as it knocks her air out.

"I'm not letting you leave here to buy more," he pants at her, scrunching his fingers back through his hair to push it back from where it's falling into his eyes. "And I'm not letting you lock yourself in there to either keep using or to hide the evidence of your using. Emily, stop fighting me."

She doesn't. It's this or admit that everything is over, and maybe the fact that the drugs are making her anger crueller and sharper is what gets her off her ass and going for that door again. Or maybe she's just an idiot, snarling at him when his arm snags her around the belly and drags her back again with infuriating ease.

She kicks back and gets him in the dick, feeling him buck into her with a rasped groan. But he doesn't let go; in fact, his arm around her curls tighter. And, when she kicks again, he dodges it, stumbling backwards and falling back with a yelp as the back of his legs hit the bed. They hit it hard, together, Spencer rolling a bit with her to stop her head from bouncing back and smashing into his chin—and then she's fighting him like she wishes she could have fought Hankel, no rhyme or reason in her hands striking his bony chest as her legs struggle to get her upright.

"Emily, stop," he yells, but she can't. Doesn't he see that she can't. She stopped fighting Hankel and look what happened, she became this—and she snarls again with a feeling like there's a sob twisting up in her chest and tries to knee him off of her.

He refuses to go, all arms and legs and gentle redirection. The bed is noisy under them but they're locked into a kind of silent fight for something that seems incredibly important to both of them that they win. She won't give in and he won't give up, until she can barely breathe through her rasping chest and he's red and sweaty, and there's a second where he's over top of her and reaching over her head with her wrist in his hand.

She gets a good shot in, right to his ribs, but it doesn't stop him cuffing her to the bed. As soon as the cuffs she hadn't even known he'd been carrying click shut, all her fight drains out of her and she sags into the ruffled sheets, staring woefully at him as he collapses next to her and wraps his arms around his ribs where she'd knocked his air out. She can hear him wheezing gently.

"Well, you've got me now," she spits with venom lacing every word. "You might as well be like every other man and fuck me. Come on, you know that turned me on—you finally acted like a man instead of a skinny little weed, take advantage of it."

"That's not you talking," he says, lifting his head a bit to look at her sadly. "I know that's not you. You don't equate masculinity with physicality, and I know you don't. You're far too smart. You're just trying to make me angry so I leave, so you can get high, and I don't want to hear it until you're sober."

"Until I'm sober? Maybe this is who I am, Spencer. I'm a piece of shit addict. Come on, I just beat the crap out of you and you still think I'm some wonderful thing? I'm still the person you thought I was? Tell me you're not that naïve."

"We're going to get through this," he says, standing and walking to the bathroom with only one quick look back at her. "You'll see."

"Naïve," she throws after him. He'll see. There's no getting through this.

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Room 17B. June 14, 2007. 22:48.

"I want a shower."

He hums but doesn't move from where he's pretending to read a book. "Fine," he says, looking at her but without any warmth in his expression. This is how it's been all night, with him silent and accusing and her refusing to give in to that accusation. "But only if you either tell me where you've hidden the drugs or if you agree to come back to my apartment for the night."

She glares, and he shrugs and looks back down to his book.

"How about I call Hotch and tell him you have me cuffed to a hotel bed and see how fast he fires both our asses?" she mutters under her breath, tugging at the cuffs half-heartedly. He's stripped a pillow-case from the bed and tucked it between the metal and her wrist so her pulling at it doesn't mark her skin, and she hates him for how caring a notion that is while he's technically holding her captive.

"I told you. I'll also let you go, but only if you, once again, either tell me where the drugs are or if you agree to come home with me. I'm not letting you go out to get high to prove a point and end up overdosing in some crappy hotel room where I can't help you—"

"Ha!" She makes sure her voice is mocking even though her heart isn't in it anymore as the downswing begins to hit and leave her nothing but tired and irritable. "That's what this is about—you and your hero complex. You think you can swoop in and save me, huh? Like every other victim, just to make yourself feel that you've saved me from myself, go you, look at you. Shit, Reid, maybe you should have tried that before you got me kidnapped—"

He stands, dropping the book. "You can shower but I'm going to be in the room," he says blandly.

She stops. Had she hit a nerve?

Probably.

"Invasion of privacy," she taunts. "Don't I get to say no? That's a little…"

But she stops because something horrible just flickered across his expression, some great fight he's having with himself. She could push this. He's clearly already fighting himself over this, over feeling like he's stripping away her agency… it wouldn't take much to guilt him into leaving her alone to self-destruct.

And then it occurs to her that letting him see is crueller than anything else she could taunt him with.

"Fine," she says. "You can be in there. Bold assumption, to think I won't use in front of you."

A correct assumption. Even saying it to cut at him has her feeling sick to her stomach as her sense fights to reassert control now that the drugs are fading. But he doesn't say a word, just unlocks the cuffs and rubs her wrist gently to make sure it hasn't cut her skin before stepping back and averting his eyes as she walks past. She's sure, in that moment, that they're never going to be like they were again. How could they, after this?

But the affect of her sauntering out is marred a bit by her staggering, almost hitting the carpet on her knees if he hadn't caught her. "Whoa," he murmurs, his hands kind even though she recoils from his touch. "When did you eat last?"

"Get off me," she hisses. He does, with a sound of frustration as he steps back and visibly frets, eyes wide and hands out awkwardly.

"If you're dizzy already, a shower is going to make that worse," he points out through his frustration. "You'll faint."

"Good! Maybe I'll hit my head and I won't have to deal with you anymore!"

With that, she stalks into the bathroom, trying to hide that her eyes are burning even though she's angry, not sad. In there, she stares for a moment at the shower before giving in and sitting on the mat, all of her energy gone despite how sticky and gross she feels. When he walks in, that's where she still is, rubbing at the crook of her arm and wishing he'd just tell her what he plans to do to her.

He doesn't comment, just walks past and turns the tap of the bath on. "Adjust the temperature," he says softly after putting the plug in, his sleeves rolled up as he squats back and glances at her. "I'll get your water bottle. Don't do anything stupid, please."

She doesn't. Not because he asked but just… because.

And, when he comes back, she's standing back up and her clothes are on the ground beside her, meeting his startled gaze with a stare that dares him to look at her and she everything she's hidden from him. Completely sober, she probably couldn't have done this. Stoned, she probably couldn't have either. She's at the perfect stage of withdrawing where she's angry enough to hurt him like this, using her body as the scarred knife to do so.

The trembling only stares when his gaze skims up from her scarred thighs up to her breasts, where the skin had split and torn and the result is garish even now it's healed. As soon as he sees, all her fight goes and she's left shaking with her fists bunched at her sides.

He doesn't say anything and she whirls away from his stare, almost slipping with haste as she scrambles into the slightly-too-hot bath and sinks down. When she looks up at him, he's just standing there still. Water bottle in hand and wearing an expression she doesn't understand, standing slightly hunched like he's just been struck.

Horrified that he's not attracted to her anymore, a small part of her mind points out before digging in the knife. Disgusted with her, more likely.

She grabs for the sponge and uses cleaning her skin to try and hide her horror, scrubbing hard while staring down at her knees poking out of the water. Hating every sweep of the sponge on her body, hating the body under it, hating—

His hand catches hers, having crouched beside her while she wasn't looking.

"You're hurting yourself doing that," he says quietly, taking the rough sponge from her and tossing it into the corner of the bathroom well out of reach. "Please don't."

"Why not?" she hisses, covering herself with her arms. "Look what he did to me, Spencer. Look what I let him do…"

They sit in silence, the tap dripping into her bathwater breaking up the moment.

When his hand touches hers, gently pulling her arm away, she lets him. With a kind of miserable fascination, she watches as he touches the scars along the top of her breast, barely brushing his finger against it, before tracing the outside of the reddened, flaking skin where her furious scrubbing over the past few months has left the skin aching and raw.

"I'm sorry," he says finally.

She's tired, that's why she scoots closer with her skin squeaking on the bath in order to lean her head on his shoulder like no time has passed at all between them and now. "It wasn't your fault," she admits. "You didn't let him take me, I was just being an asshole—"

"Oh no, I know that. I'm sorry now because I didn't see how much you've been struggling. I knew you weren't okay but I didn't…" But he's still staring at those marks. "He… he whipped you."

She blinks.

"You didn't know?"

"I knew. I… I think I knew without knowing. I didn't… realise what that would look like."

"Oh."

She looks down too. For some reason, she'd really thought that they knew everything that had happened in that shack. Every last horrendous moment, from when he'd lashed her with his belt to the small defeat of when her bladder had failed her. And she'd used that against them, hating them for leaving her to suffer like that while knowing exactly what happened to her.

"I'm scared," he says suddenly, looking her right in the eyes. She's pinned by that gaze. "Emily, I wouldn't let you leave tonight because I'm scared of what you'll do if you leave. I'm scared you'll…"

"I'm not going to accidentally OD," she says with a soft huff, wondering why he thinks she's that clumsy. "Give me some credit."

"I don't think there'd be anything accidental about it," he retorts, stopping her stupid, selfish heart for a moment. She hasn't considered that. Has she?

With a rush, she remembers how good dying had been in comparison to this, and knows that he's seen that thought flicker across her face because he stands and walks out. She's not really expecting him to come back, looking down at her scars and touching them herself while trying to imagine what they'd look like to someone not-her. Would she judge him for the scars on his body if he was in her place? Would she leave him to drown?

But he comes back, stalling out her train of thought. He's carrying something.

"This is technically evidence but I told Hotch I'd lost it in the chaos," Spencer rambles, kneeling by her side and uncurling his whitened fingers to show her what he's clutching so tight. She stares at it, not understanding. "It's just, I can't… Emily, you need to understand. As soon as I saw the stream, I knew he was drugging you. I knew it was only a matter of time before he killed you. With his track record and with what his peers from NA told us, I knew it was likely opiates he was using which made his ignorance of your weight even more deadly… as soon as I realised this, I knew it would have to be me making the entry in to extract you, and I knew I would need this."

"An EpiPen?" she points out, now very lost. He won't let her take it, curling his fingers back around it like it's something he needs.

"I doctored it," he says, something dark and intense in his voice. "Naloxone reverses the effects of opiate depression, but there aren't any auto-injectors for it currently in the market and I knew Hankel would stop me if he saw me inject it manually. So I… doctored an EpiPen to dispense it instead of epinephrine, and I kept it up my sleeve and used kissing you to mask me administering it. But when you started rousing, you were angry. Dismayed. You gave the very vivid impression of wanting to have died there and… it frightened me. It still frightens me. So I kept it. And then I began to suspect you were using again and that frightened me more, so I followed you. Nothing that has happened tonight has dissuaded me of my fears." He opens his hand again, looking down at the pen on his palm. Emily is too stunned to comment.

"Christ," she breathes finally, reeling at what he did to keep her alive.

"You have no idea how haunted I am by finding you dying," he whispers more to the pen than to her, it seems. "When I close my eyes, I see it without fail. You pushing me away was almost a relief because I'm barely able to push the memory aside when I can't see you. Do you know what I think of your scars?"

She shakes her head numbly.

"I love them," he says intently, now looking her in the eye like there's nowhere else he'd rather be looking. It floors her. "I love that you're alive to scar. I love that you're here and able to heal, instead of cold and perfect in a grave somewhere under a pretentious headstone you'd hate. I love that I saved you and I'd do it again and again and again, no matter how many times you hated me for it—and I want you to realise that I hate feeling like I'm stripping you of your agency by my actions both tonight and in the future, but I also need you to realise that I would have taken every single lash of that belt to spare you the pain, felt every bite of the needle. I would go as far as I need to keep you safe and alive, and that's why I recommend doing exactly as I say and not fighting me further—because I walked into that cabin expecting you to be dead, expecting to hold your body. It was the hardest, longest walk of my life, but I did it. Helping you now? It's a cakewalk in comparison, so you know I'm not giving up on you. Ever. Even if you hate for me it."

What else can she say but, "Okay."