"He lunged at you, I take it?" Rossi asked from behind Hotch.
The words cut him. They made his throat close up. Of course he didn't, he thought. But he'd lunged at her. He hurt her! I couldn't let it go, I just couldn't.
Hotch crouched down without replying; he slid his hand down Robbins' shirt. He didn't expect to find any concealed weapons on him but in that moment, following protocol was easier than thinking about what he just did. And this way he could pretend that he wasn't paying attention to the accusations.
He tried not to think about the photos Garcia had shown him. Or about Morgans's desperate cry for an ambulance. Or the moment his index twitched against the trigger.
"Threw himself at you, threatened you with that knife…?" Rossi continued.
He was praying that he'd stop asking these questions, that he'd give up and just walk away. What could he say that would sound even remotely believable? He would never believe that he thought that Robbins threatened him.
Hotch didn't answer. He kept patting Robbins down. He went through his pockets, turning them inside out. He hesitated at his right leg, reluctant to touch what he believed was Emily's blood. He took a deep breath but the salty scent made double over. He tried to calm himself down by reminding himself of all the different ways Robbins could've stained his pants. None of them seemed believable.
"You know how this will play out. He's the second unsub we've shot under questionable circumstances in a single week."
Hotch looked up reluctantly; Rossi was standing right behind him, his gun holstered, his hands in his pockets. He seemed as composed as always-but inside, he felt sick. He'd just helped Morgan lay Emily on a gurney and the image of her washed-out face still lingered behind his eyes.
Her face was so pale, so inhumanly ashen. And yet it was covered in vivid, colorful bruises. It was as if the contusions were spurts of make-up, carelessly spread across her skin. As if under all the black and green and purple she was still intact, full of life, untouched by whatever macabre darkness Robbins had inside him. He found this contrast nauseating.
And now Rossi realized that she wasn't the only one he had to worry about. Hotch was definitely going to be questioned about Robbins' death, and considering how Strauss had already ordered them to stand down, he was sure those questions were going to be stern and prejudiced.
"There's no 'we'." Hotch finished searching the body and stood up. His fingers were sticky with blood. He found it hard to keep his eyes off of it. "This is my responsibility. If Strauss or anyone else wants to peruse our files, I…"
"No 'if' there, Hotch," Rossi cut in. "They will look into this. And JJ's case as well."
"Her situation was different, she saved a victim, we were all there, we can testify. No one was here with me. I took the shot. I did this."
Rossi glanced at the body. Robbins was lying on his back, a single gunshot wound on the right side of his forehead. The blood had already started to cake around the puncture wound. The rusty spot on his jeans, where he'd wiped something-a knife, his hand-over and over however, still seemed damp as if blood was still seeping through the fabric.
"You could've at least gone for the chest or the stomach… Try explaining to the BAU that a non-execution-style shot to the head is not personal."
"There's nothing to explain. I made a decision and I'm aware of the consequences it may have."
"Right." Rossi nodded briefly. He stepped closer to the body. Then, as if by accident, he gently kicked the handle of the knife so it slid closer to Robbins' hand. "Damn," he said, shaking his head. "I tempered with a crime scene."
Hotch frowned.
"On the other hand," Rossi went on, "this way it at least looks like he was still holding it when he went down."
"I didn't ask you to do that," Hotch said coldly. "You're in no way involved in this. You should go over to the hospital, see if the doctors know anything yet. I'll call Strauss and tell her what happened. What I did." He knew he'd seem a lot more confident in himself if he could look Rossi in the eye. But he couldn't. He kept staring at his hand, mesmerized.
"In no way involved, huh… You know, Hotch." Rossi leaned against the doorframe. "This is probably the worst thing you could be doing now. I understand you're blaming yourself for what happened to her. I'm not saying you're right but I understand. And I also understand that you feel the need to be punished for it. But giving Strauss the means to take you down won't solve anything. It won't make her feel any better and it sure as hell won't help the team."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you do. Killing Robbins, that was your fault. But Emily's abduction- that wasn't."
"I took the shot because I believed he was about to tackle me. I'd told him to stand down but he refused," Hotch said, finally looking Rossi straight in the eyes. Rossi held his gaze.
Hotch knew he could lie to Rossi- whether or not he chooses to believe it is none of his concern. But he couldn't lie to himself, no matter how hard he tried.
He knew his decision to take the shot was unprofessional, to say the least. It wasn't even a decision, really. It was a hazy mess of worry, guilt and fear. And the blood-her blood-smeared across his pants like a kid would rub his dirty hand on his pants after playing outside. The pictures of a destroyed body that he could recall as vividly as if he'd only seen them a second ago. That brute, saying she was too 'messed up' to testify against him. And the dread that there might not even be a chance for her to give a testimony.
That shot was supposed to kill all of it. All his worries, all his fears.
But it didn't. It just made everything worse. He loathed himself for giving Robbins the easy way out. For believing that he was capable of scarring Emily enough to break her. For failing to stay focused, for acting on impulse.
"I don't believe any of that," Rossi snorted. "I think you took the shot because you were afraid he'd make a deal or that he'd be sentenced to a mental facility and eventually get away. And I think you also pulled that trigger because you knew it was wrong. You knew you'd be blamed for his death and you wanted that because you blame yourself for her pain and you think you deserve to suffer. You want to be punished."
Hotch didn't react. He turned his back to Rossi and pretended to be busy with his phone.
Rossi realized he struck a chord. He didn't feel guilty about it, he knew that Hotch wouldn't admit this to himself but he needed to hear it, out loud. He needed to realize that this wasn't the time for self-flagellation. They didn't have the luxury of dwelling on mistakes they made or believed to have made.
If they got through this, if Emily… no, when Emily becomes her old self again, then can they pity and hate themselves. But not until then.
"I'll go, take a look around, maybe we missed something that could come in handy when we have to give the report on Robbins," Rossi said and he stepped out of the room to give Hotch a minute to collect himself.
The sharp, sterile order of the OR was now tainted with whispers of a brutal kidnapping and the torture of an FBI agent.
The table was cold against her naked back. Metal objects clattered around her, doctors and nurses shouted over her head, machines beeped as they administered a new dose of anaesthetics again and again. She sensed none of it.
Her clothes were spread on the floor, right were a nurse had thrown them after she'd hastily cut them off of her. They looked exactly like the blood-soaked gauze patches the doctors kept dropping on the floors, replacing them with new, clean ones, hoping to eventually clear the wound up enough so that they would finally be able to see what they were dealing with.
New squirts of blood gushed from her abdomen as the surgeons desperately tried to locate the bullet and thus the source of the bleeding. They had already set up the IVs, and the plastic tubes were dripping saline and blood into her veins, reluctantly carrying life to her each and every cell.
She wasn't aware of her surroundings. She had been unconscious since she'd been lifted out of the ambulance. But this was a different kind of senselessness than what she'd felt when she lay comatose in that basement, trapped inside her very own nightmares. This was an undisturbed, almost peaceful numbness. There were no flashing images, no horrifying screams of hers ringing in her ears, no harrowing doubt about whether or not she was hallucinating a little boy-whether or not she'd gone insane.
There were no thoughts. No doubts, no questions, no hopes. There was nothing. Nothing but the quiet, soothing void of darkness. It didn't demand that she kept fighting. It didn't ask her to be brave, to not give up. It recognized that she was far beyond what she could take, what she was willing to take, and it accepted her, no matter what she eventually chose: fighting on or giving up. It didn't expect anything of her and it didn't give her false promises. It simply lingered there. And she was unbelievably grateful for that.
It had been almost twenty minutes since Garcia left JJ alone in her office, so she decided to check on her. She walked back to her lair and knocked to let JJ know she was there. She reached for the doorknob and turned it but the door remained closed. Garcia tried again, knocking harder this time but there was no answer.
"JJ?" she asked the door. "JJ, it's me. Would you let me in?"
Garcia waited for a few seconds but there was no sound from inside.
"JJ?" she asked again, more worried this time. "Let me in, please?"
There was a soft shuffle; someone was nearing the door inside. There was a faint scratching around the knob as if someone was trying to turn the key. Then the latch clicked. Garcia waited for a couple seconds but nothing happened, so she gently pushed the door; it opened this time. She stepped inside the room.
JJ had already gone back to the chair and sat down. She stared at the desk in silence, her legs pulled up, her arms crossed in front of her chest.
Garcia quietly locked the door behind her. The room was dark, the only dim light came from the screens; she stumbled onto a remote on the floor. Kicking it aside, she walked over to JJ and took a seat next to her. They were close enough for her to be able to make out JJ's hunched figure.
They sat there for a few minutes, neither of them saying anything.
"I didn't mean for any of this to happen," JJ finally said, still not looking up. Her voice was hushed and hoarse as if she'd been crying for a while.
Garcia didn't know what to say. She felt painfully sorry for both JJ and Emily. The feeling of not being able to help either of them was choking her.
"Everyone knows that," Garcia replied softly.
JJ slowly looked up and for a moment Garcia wished she hadn't. Her eyes were glistening with shadows of tears. And the look on her face- Garcia knew she would never forget that look. It was full of begging and helplessness, of guilt and doubts. Her face contorted for a second, then she looked away.
"I don't care about everyone. I need her to know it," she whispered.
Garcia winced as she remembered that phone call from Morgan-don't let JJ near Emily…
"She does, honey," she said, trying to convince JJ as much as herself. She took JJ's hand, but she jolted and, looking sorry, she pulled away.
"No, she doesn't." Her lips twisted into a tortured half-smile, her nails dug into her skin.
"Why would you say that?" She couldn't know about what Emily said to Morgan, could she? No one would have told her, no one…
JJ didn't answer. She kept her eyes on the floor. Her chest felt heavy. She felt repulsed by the whole situation-she was the last person who deserved comforting.
JJ felt like she was burning up. There were too many emotions, all demanding to be felt. And there was no way to relieve them, to relieve herself.
"She didn't mean it," Garcia said, having come to the conclusion that Reid must have mentioned it to her. "She wasn't conscious, she didn't know what…"
"You've seen it too?" she asked. A new stream of tears appeared. She tried to blink them away. "It doesn't matter, Garcia. She said it. She thought of it. That's enough."
"Seen what?" Garcia glanced at JJ, trying to look into her eyes. Seen what? Did she see Emily when she was being wheeled into the ambulance? How could they let that happen?
"The video. It wouldn't even exist if it had been me in that room. Emily would never have gotten a tape like this. Because then, then it would've been fair." The words felt heavy rolling off of her tongue. Garcia sat in silence, listening to every word, trying to understand what she was talking about. "And I would never have blamed her because she would never have let me get hurt." She paused for a second. Her fist loosened up. She wanted to keep balling it, to feel her nails cut into her flesh but she suddenly felt weak, barely able to sit. "I've been thinking about what I should have done different and there are so many things, too many… And then I thought it still wasn't my fault. Robbins was insane and he had a choice. I'm not responsible for his actions. I didn't want Emily to take my place, I'd never ask anyone to do that. I was paralyzed, I couldn't even speak…" She couldn't even cry anymore. "But it doesn't matter. None of it does. The only thing I cared about was what she believed… And now I know."
"What video, JJ?" Garcia finally asked.
"The one you've seen. The one where she says I did this to her…Where she looks like she's way past life as it is…" She motioned towards a computer. "It's there. Go ahead if you wanna have another look," she said bitterly. "Sorry about your screen, by the way… I'll have it fixed."
Confused, Garcia stood up and slowly walked toward the light switch. She didn't know of any videos made by Robbins. And she was scared out of her mind to watch one.
She heard someone say directly to her that she was going to be okay. She barely registered it though. Had she been lucid, it would've crossed her mind how useless it seems to talk to a semi-conscious patient. And yet, hours later, when the sedatives started to wear off, she still remembered those words. But she didn't let herself think about whether this was good news or it just meant that this hopeless clinging to life was never going to end.
It was the safest she's ever felt. Just lying there, feeling the warmth of the bed, the pureness of her skin that a nurse had cleaned so gently; it was a relief knowing that she was no longer blood, tear, and dirt stained. She was finally able to breathe without feeling a hot pinch whenever her rising chest tried to lift her shirt off of the bullet wound.
It was so serene. The only sound she could tell apart from the constant beeping and her rumbling thoughts was a loud, monotonous tramping, just outside of her room. It grew louder and louder until it sounded like someone was banging on the door, then it became quieter and quieter, and eventually faded into the dull background. Sometimes it was a furious, desperate stomping and sometimes it was hesitant, hopeless, powerless steps, as if the person pacing outside couldn't decide whether he wanted to run, chase after ghosts and scream, scream and scream, or he wanted to kneel down and beg to whomever was willing to listen.
She still wasn't completely awake; the sedatives had not worn off. She couldn't form coherent thoughts just yet, but somehow she was sure the stomping outside that sometimes calmed, and sometimes unnerved her, was caused by his boots. She believed it was Morgan, pacing impatiently up and down the corridor, hunting for any bits of news he could get out of the doctors.
The thought of him stirred something inside her. It made her feel protected and eternally grateful. Had he not shown up, she would still be living in her own personal hell. But it also made her feel agitated. He had kept saying she should stay awake, that she should squeeze his hand. He'd said she could take it.
If she hadn't been so exhausted, she would've been furious. Why would he do that to her? He couldn't have had the slightest idea of what it was like. He wasn't the one who had endured all that torture, physical and mental as well. He wasn't the one with a broken body and a haunted mind. And yet he demanded that she did not fade out. Why did he have to force her to keep going? It wasn't his place to say anything at all. He should have left her there, he should have let her go.
The most terrifying part of it all was that she couldn't recall what that 'torture' was or what she meant by 'broken body and haunted mind'. She knew something unexplainable had happened to her and she knew those words were true, they described how she had and still felt. But what brought all of this on, she couldn't call to mind. All she remembered was the chilling cold and the dark walls surrounding her. And the terrifying feeling that the next blow could come anytime, from anywhere, and there was no way out, nothing to stop the new shock of pain.
She knew there was someone else in the room. She wasn't alone with the silent shadows. There was a man, walking toward her, coming to help her… And then he raised his fist and she realized he wasn't there to save her. He was there so that she'd never be released from her misery.
Her heart rate quickene, panic rose inside of her. The beeping became more rapid, rapid enough for her to notice it even though she had gotten used to it so much that she didn't even hear it anymore. She tried to ignore it but it kept dragging her back to the present. She longed for the stillness the noise had snatched.
Someone banged on the door, then entered the room and forcibly made his way to the side of her bed. He called her name, asked a question but she didn't care to answer. She didn't even open her eyes. She wanted to be left alone. He pressed a few buttons, adjusted a tube. The noise subdued. He called her name again, then left the room, carefully closing the door behind himself.
Her thoughts were twirling. She still wasn't lucid, so they were manifested in pictures and the pictures mingled with gruesome, grotesque images of hallucinations.
She didn't want to think. She didn't need her thoughts. She longed for the darkness that had embraced her before.
She didn't have to wait long. When the sedative kicked in, she welcomed the void like a lifelong friend.