Chapter Ten: Foil
AN: Beta'd by the lovely Greeneyedconstellations
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On the day of the funeral, it rained. Emily thought he might have appreciated the weather's sentiment.
They bore the coffin and the weight of it dragged her down, threatening to bring her to her knees on the sodden earth. Hotch stumbled once.
None of them cried. Emily suspected that they didn't know how to anymore. After all, this was the second goodbye they'd had this year, and judging from the expressions on their faces when they'd found her sitting by his body, they had all lost hope of retracting one of those goodbyes.
When Hotch slipped again on the slick ground, Sergio appeared at her feet.
"This is no way to pay our respects," he said quietly, and the rain curved around them, running in rivulets over their heads as though someone had flipped a glass bowl over the grass-lined path.
There was no seeing the crowd around them through the water in her eyes, even as she shook her head to try and clear her vision. Pants slapping wetly against her legs, her shoes sunk into the gravel as she struggled to grip the wet brass of the handle. By the looks of the other pallbearers, they all similarly suffered.
Except for Rossi. He walked with his back straight and head high and didn't falter once.
When the coffin lowered, every creak of the wood echoed hollowly with the memory of I killed him. In the eyes of every mourner surrounding them, more than she'd have ever imagined had loved the reserved man they buried, she saw his accusing gaze.
The priest spoke, but she didn't hear any of the words. Instead she heard the final thing she remembered him saying clearly. She was sure he'd said other things after, wished her goodnight perhaps, or asked Hotch a question, but there was only one thing she could remember his voice saying.
"I won't hurt him."
In the end, he'd died for that promise. She watched her team grieve and said nothing of the man standing in the crowd of mourners with his face obscured. He wasn't the only one. Many of them hid under umbrellas or hoods, or even a small subset of magus with their faces hidden by the cowls of heavy cloaks.
He wasn't any of those.
His invisibility had always relied on being unimportant, and despite looking straight at him, Emily saw both JJ and Morgan's eyes skitter over him. She didn't want to think about what that meant. She had a horrible suspicion it was because he was no longer the man who the team knew. He'd been changed so much by that night in Gideon's cabin that they couldn't recognise him now even if they wanted to.
That horrible suspicion was accompanied by a matching one that suggested that perhaps she was the only thing tying him to himself anymore.
When the ceremony ended, she slipped over to him and stood with their shoulders brushing together. He said nothing.
"The entire FBI and then some is here," she murmured finally. "It's a bit cocky of you to stand in the middle of them to say goodbye to a man they think you killed." That was cruel. She regretted it as soon as she said it, but she was bizarrely angry for no good reason and almost needed to lash out.
Face still obscured, his words were muffled by the hood of the ratty jumper he was wearing. It looked bizarre on him, hanging loosely from slim shoulders. "The only man who would know me isn't in the position to do so any more." There was a choked misery to his tone, his breath hitching slightly. He grieved too. "I have nothing here to fear."
She couldn't grieve with him. Allowing herself emotion other than the anger was too dangerous.
She closed her eyes, wishing for the black of her eyelids to block out this day and all the ones that had preceded it. All it allowed her was the ability to remember that night more clearly, in his refuge where he had ultimately fallen.
Spencer on the table with his hands soaked in blood and her gun on his heart.
"I killed him," he had said dully. It rung with the truth, in a way his parroting Foyet at the train station hadn't. "He was my mentor, and I killed him."
"This isn't your fault," she said finally, opening her eyes. Morgan was looking around, looking for her. He didn't seem to see her.
The rain thickened around them. There was the acrid gunmetal smell of a storm's potential in the air, as though they stood in the eye and around them chaos reigned. Spencer tilted his head back, his chin and the barest shadowed suggestion of his jawline becoming visible as he stared up directly into the rain, welcoming it.
Ah. Not the weather's sentiment at all then.
"If he hadn't been trying to protect me, he could have beaten Foyet," Reid replied shortly, shoving his hands in his pocket and slouching, looking around at her. His posture had always been best described as terrible, but at this point it was approaching aggressively shitty. JJ would have scolded him to see it. "I was a weapon Foyet used to destroy him. How do I even begin to atone for that?"
Aching with the pain she knew he was feeling, she reached for his mind the same way she had that night, but he evaded her. Unlike last time, he wasn't weakened by shock and grief and pain, and he shut her out completely.
Her words of that night haunted her. Slipping through his fractured shields and finding herself overwhelmed with the familiar loved feel of him, and sickened by the way Hankel's influence had settled his mind and thoughts like a spider's silken web blown against a brick wall, clinging and colouring everything with the taste of him. She had tried to brush that cloying touch away, speaking directly to the part of him that still shone brightly, untouched.
"Look at me and say that again," she had said, and her gun hadn't wavered. "And if I believe you, I'll do it."
The same eyes from Hankel's cabin looked up at her, blank and broken. He spoke back, almost overwhelming her with the conflicting flavours of his mind. His own, sweet and familiar and laced with the acidic bite of Hankel and the dull coppery tang of his own misery. "I'm responsible for his death," he sent, and she lowered the gun. Not a lie. Not the truth, not fully. He believed it though. "If I hadn't been here, he wouldn't have died."
That was the truth. She had holstered the gun and stepped over to her fallen mentor. Checked his pulse. Found nothing. Blood from the wounds on his chest, his torso, everywhere. Blood that was on Spencer's hands from where he'd tried and failed to save him.
Clumsy. Shadow magic wounds, not weather. Even Foyet hadn't been able to set it up to his liking. Gideon had put up a hell of a fight.
She hoped he had made Foyet pay for this. If he hadn't, she would on his behalf.
"You should have shot me," the Reid next to her said, overlaying the Reid of her memories. Water dripped down her back, her chest, fucking everywhere, souring her mood even more.
"You should stop trying to be so fucking self-sacrificing. We're not going to. Gideon died to keep you alive." She felt the shudder that ran through him at that. The rain faltered for a moment, then came back twice as fast. People hurried away, heads bowed against the deluge. "At least try to ensure that sacrifice wasn't for nothing."
"Foyet sends his regards," Reid replied bluntly, his lip curling as he looked away. She followed his gaze to Hotch, standing by the grave with no regard for the rain that soaked him and left his dark hair plastered to his forehead. "He wishes you to know that Gideon was not easily overcome. That my help was integral to his d-death."Choking on the bitterness of the words he was being forced to deliver. "And… and to tell Aaron that running won't… won't save him. Or his family."
"Tell him," she replied, lacing her voice with venom. "That I can't wait to put a bullet in his skull."
Reid blinked at her from the shadows of the hood. "Don't antagonise him. He's… stronger than you think."
Snorting, she shook her head, a lock of wet hair flipping into her eye and stinging. "Bullshit. He's exactly as strong as we think he is. Without you, he's nothing. And you can't hurt us – your own magic protects us from you."
His fingers dug into the flesh of her arm as he grabbed her. "Please don't rely on that," he said, his voice hoarse. "Emily, if you're all relying on that, don't. Assume… assume that protection is breached. Please."
Cold air bit at her shoulder as he dropped her arm and stepped away. She hadn't realized how close they'd been standing. As he went, the rain picked up around her again. Someone called her name, but her focus was on his back, even as the rain and wind shifted to try and hide him from her gaze.
She reached again for his mind, finding it but failing to gain entrance again, scrabbling at his mental shields. She threw the thought at him anyway, desperate. "Spence, wait. Don't vanish again. Gideon's gone – but you're not. When you can, whenever you can, come back to me." If he did, she could hold him. If not physically, but mentally. Give him something to fight for.
Anything to fight for.
A fleeting touch of his mind to hers, and the merest suggestion of love tempered with crushing loneliness. "It's not safe."
"Don't make me fucking beg you. In my entire life I've never begged – but I will now if you make me. Let us help you. Let me help you."
A long pause broken only by the wind. Finally, "Okay."
The rain cleared, leaving her surrounded by people and alone in the cemetery by the grave of Jason Gideon. She turned her back on the space he had been standing and walked towards her team.
She could see one emotion on their faces. One determination they all shared now. With Spencer's final words, his promise to come back to her, she wore that determination too.
Foyet wasn't making it out of this alive.
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There was a knock at her door after the funeral, and she opened it to find Rossi wearing the most sombre expression she'd ever seen on him.
"Hotch wants the locks on everyone's homes changed immediately," he opened with, not breaking eye-contact with her, and she knew he wasn't referring to the door. "I offered to help with yours so the Bureau's locksmithmage didn't have to go out of his way." He smiled wanly, and it didn't meet his eyes.
"Is that really why you're here?" she asked, head buzzing as she steeled herself for a fight.
There was no fucking way she was locking Reid out. Not now. Not yet.
Silence for a long moment as he examined a point just beyond her right ear. "Of course. I don't make a habit of lying to my superiors. Do you? Or do you just refrain from giving pertinent information, such as the presence of the most wanted demon in D.C. at the funeral today."
Her heart stopped. At least she was pretty sure it did. The last few days had been such a hectic ride of conflicting emotions, she wasn't entirely sure what she was feeling at any one time anymore. "I don't…"
"Don't finish that sentence. If you don't lie to me, I can pretend this is all absolutely peachy and that we're not losing control of this situation. Or have we already lost control? I'd say we probably lost control right about the point we let Gideon walk out the door to his death, wouldn't you?"
His sombre expression slipped, and she saw the grief that lined his face.
Gideon was his friend. She'd forgotten that.
The door creaked slightly as she held it open invitingly, gesturing him in. He didn't move. "Coffee?" she offered weakly, her gaze dropping to his shoes for a moment. Pooled thickly around his feet, his shadow was a shapeless mass of black, formless and congealed. Either his magic was affected by his mood, or his shadow was mourning just as much as he was.
"That's not why I'm here, Prentiss," he said quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers, gathering his thoughts. "Plain and simple, because I haven't been clear enough before this, apparently. I'm going to teach you to use your magic to its full extent because you have the potential to be brilliant, and because Gideon would have wanted me to. And I completely understand that one day, we may be on opposing sides and the magic that I teach you may be used against me."
Frozen, she stared at him. What the fuck? "I wouldn't…"
"If Reid was at the end of my gun, you wouldn't stop me? I think we both know that's bullshit. We found you sitting in Gideon's cabin, alone, next to his body, Prentiss. If you were ever going to take against Reid, it would have been in the moment you walked into that room and found your teammate dead with Reid standing over him. And you didn't. Your loyalties no longer lie with the Bureau's."
His shadow rippled and grew, almost a threat, and she felt suddenly small and hunted. None of this showed on her face, but behind her the apartment rumbled, runes reacting to her distress.
"Reid was not responsible for the death of Jason Gideon." Sergio appeared next to her, the size of a medium dog, tail lashing and the fur along his spine standing on end. "We betrayed none of our loyalties. Foyet used him as a shield to stop Gideon from striking at Foyet himself – Reid cast very little that night, and none of it aimed at his mentor. Her loyalties aside, do you think that I would have allowed him to leave there if I believed he had done it? That he was capable of doing it to her?"
"You think I wouldn't act if I needed to?" she snapped, coming back to herself with a surge of anger. Whether that anger was aimed at him for his assumptions of her, or herself for the suspicion that he may be right, she wasn't sure.
"If that action resulted in Spencer Reid's death? No. I don't. Although, your familiar is a different story. I think he, at least, would do his duty to you and his country." He settled back on his heels, and his mouth thinned into a line. "Which is why I'm going to train you to the best of my abilities, which I assure you are considerable, and we're going to bring him back alive. Between the four of us, we can probably take Foyet. We can certainly take Hankel."
"Four?" she asked, because that was the only part of that startling statement she felt even remotely ready to touch upon.
The shadow shifted and stood, forming out of the ground into the rough shape of an owl, made of rippling shades of grey. "Can't you count?" it said in a husky, feminine voice, curling into smoke and reforming over the other side of Rossi, smoke grey eyes whirling. "Or were you under the impression that your delightful kitty was the only familiar in the BAU?"
Sergio purred and Emily couldn't look away. Rossi grinned smugly. "Cooler than a cat, isn't she?" he said.
"Doubtful," Sergio said, shrinking down and narrowing his eyes. The effect was ruined by his continued purring. He was a sucker for compliments.
Rossi held out his hand. "Coming?" he asked, and she stepped out and closed the door behind her.
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"Is this a field trip? Should I be taking notes?" Her foot skidded on the damp grass on the bank of the Potomac, almost dumping her on her ass. Having none of her difficulty, Rossi smirked and made his way easily down the steeply sloping surface towards the water. "Rossi, seriously. What are we doing?"
"Training," he responded easily, reaching the water and nudging it with his shoe with no care for the undoubtedly expensive leather. "Obviously."
"Obviously," she repeated incredulously, looking around for Sergio. The cat was nowhere to be seen, not trusting enough to stand on the side of a river with them. Git. She could have used his snark to offset Rossi's natural… Rossi-ness.
"You are," Rossi began, turning and beaming happily at her, "handicapped. By your own magic."
Wow. Thanks for the vote of confidence. She glowered and said nothing.
He continued, ignoring her dark scowl. "Light magic has its uses. For one, it's so easy that even a child can learn it. Runes, spells, whatever; light mages work with the efforts of mages long dead to cast their spells. They make very little of their magic their own."
This… wasn't what she had expected. It certainly wasn't dodging around Gideon's office trying to fruitlessly procure a chess piece. "You sound like you hate light affined magic."
"On the contrary, I think it's marvellous. For one, it makes a brilliant foil to dark. So many people think they're opposites, but in reality it's nothing like that. You don't cancel out the darkness with light – the strongest shadows are formed by the brightest lights." His eyes were oddly intent, and something shivered down her spine. "Gideon and I were proof of that, back in our heydays. Secondly, and this is the bit I want you to pay attention to because it's important, light magic makes what I do look so much more impressive in comparison, which makes me appear simply genius."
"And humble," Sergio added, appearing at a safe distance and picking his way cautiously across the grass. "Don't forget how humble you are."
Rossi shrugged, settling his heels into the mud more firmly. "I have to have flaws, otherwise I'd be too wonderful to live with." As he gestured her closer, she inched over to him, not quite as keen to end up in the river as he seemed to be. "Thirdly, I don't believe the divide between the two is anywhere near as wide as what is commonly thought. And I think, Agent Prentiss, that you are the proof of this theory."
"Me?" she asked warily. "I'm light affined. Through and through."
Dark eyes studied her. She was forcefully reminded of the way Reid had looked at her, that first day at the BAU. "Maybe once. But now? I don't think it's so clear. Dark mages are limitless. We draw our energy not from the stored energy of the runes that you've covered your body with, but from the world surrounding us. Close your eyes and reach for me, just like you'd reach for your runes."
This was ridiculous. "This is ridiculous," she muttered, closing her eyes nonetheless. Insects buzzed, the sun beat down on her neck, and this was ridiculous. She could no more find Rossi than she could tap into the power of the Poto-
"Focus," Sergio urged, right as her questing mind stumbled straight into something older and stronger than she could ever be and was almost lost.
It was like tumbling into a speeding current, feeling the slight tug under her feet that swept her in. For a bizarre moment she was falling even though her body stood still, almost dragged away from herself. Someone caught her; not one of the two minds she was familiar with - neither Reid's cotton-candy saccharinity or Sergio's itchy dander - but someone smooth and sleek like the fur of a sea otter she'd patted at the zoo one time. Underneath that smooth texture was warmth and fun and the comforting glow of experience. There was also darkness, the promise of violence, a predators' caution.
"Woah," she thought wildly, feeling ill as the mind that held her did little to stop the waves from tugging at her and trying to coax her further into their grasp.
"Welcome to the Potomac," Rossi said, his mind swooping with the delight of being right. Even his brain was unbearably smug. "She likes you. Also, I told you so. She's an old river, but generous - draw from her. I won't let you drown, and you won't need a visible rune to work with once you tap her strength, although it will make it easier for you if you do visualize one."
She did as he instructed, reaching into the rushing current of the power that eddied around her and drawing forth a whorl of it. It was slippery in her mind's grasp, hard to understand how to hold, until she took a steadying breath and thought of the even trail of paint under her brush. She knew how to use ink and paint, knew how to shape them. Once she thought of this power as the ink and her as the brush that shaped it, it was impossibly simple.
And it was more power than she'd ever handled before, even this tiny amount. It was… terrifyingly seductive. She shivered at the conflicting emotions, suddenly horribly aware of why their teachers had always pushed the need to be aware of the dangers of being lost in yourself. It would almost be a pleasure to be lost to this.
"Good. Fantastic. Do something simple with it. Something you know off by heart. Something familiar. Make a light, perhaps. Or a song. I don't know what you do with your spare time."
Something familiar. Light was familiar; the first thing they learned was to cast a light. It was a good way for teachers to tell how much power they were pouring into their spells, to better teach them control.
She thought of the light and thought of the rune, and suddenly a memory of her thrusting her hand under Reid's nose intruded, the blue gleam of her creds casting shadows onto his distracted face.
He'd smiled. She felt the memory of the smile, remembered his mind.
She fumbled the light and tripped, and then she wasn't by the river anymore.
.
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She was in a church, old and abandoned, littered with the rotted remains of broken pews and an altar that had seen better days. The reek of damp filled the air, especially thick in the corner she was hunkered down in; sitting cross-legged on a pile of assorted blankets arranged in a kind of make-shift nest with her back against the wall.
She was hungry, hungrier than she could ever remember being, and her hands shook in her lap. She knew fear and loneliness and a bone-biting cold that wouldn't go away no matter how much she curled into herself to try and warm up. The back of her mind hummed with an unconscious need for something, something to slow it, something to numb it. Her eyes tracked the others with her, thoughts racing faster than she'd ever known them to and neatly ordering themselves in a way her mind never had before.
Foyet paced in front of her, his face cruel and furious, and between them stood Hankel.
"You don't have the right," Hankel was saying, cowering back but not shifting, not allowing Foyet access to her. "You don't, you don't. 'Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.' That's what was said. You can't hurt him, he's mine."
"Maybe he should have thought of that before he continually began subverting me at every chance he got," snapped Foyet, turning on them both with his skin rippling ominously, shadows playing cat's cradle at his fingertips. Emily's breath caught in her throat, her eyes locked on those shadows.
Don't stand down, Tobias, she thought desperately. Don't let him hurt me. With it came a sickly kind of affection, the affection of a beaten dog when offered a pat from the opposing hand to the one that struck them.
Foyet could hurt her with those shadows. He had before. Ordered her to stand still and covered her in them, tying her down, pinning her helplessly, his flesh fingers digging into her skin…
She choked back a yelp of shock at the memory of Foyet's shadows on her, in her, and her regard suddenly turned sharply inward.
"Emily?" she thought, a cold rush of horror and confusion tearing through her and almost shaking her loose. "What...?"
Foyet moved, ducking around Hankel and the shadows lashed. She jerked upright. Run,she thought in a panic, and she did, wings up and out the side door, bright, hot light slashing into their eyes and it wasn't her, wasn't her at all.
Her/his foot caught a gravestone and almost toppled them over and he was trying to shove her out, shove her away, he didn't want her to see what was –
Pain. It exploded in the base of her skull and his spine and they screamed.
Someone grabbed her arm and his and wrenched them away from each other. Pain burned in her hand, her hand, not his, and she opened her eyes.
Sergio stood on her chest, trembling, blood oozing from the bite mark on the meat of her thumb. She was… with Rossi. Rossi, who was staring at her wide-eyed and shocked, the mud under her seeping wetly into her clothes and chilling her. On her back, on the bank, not a church or a graveyard in sight.
"You idiot!" screamed Sergio, spitting. "You stupid, ratbrained fool! Where did you go? Something was hurting you!"
"What was that?" Rossi was demanding at the same time, his fingers cutting into her shoulder. She blinked up at him, the images of him still flooding her mind. "You vanished, where the hell did you go? Your damn cat couldn't even wake you up."
Pushing Sergio to the ground, she staggered up, feeling the phantom echoes of his pain fading from her body, even though she knew that somewhere he still screamed. "He's in a cemetery," she said numbly, her voice oddly feminine and shrill to her after her unplanned cavort into Reid's brain. "We were wrong. They didn't run at all. They have him in a cemetery."
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"You saw through his eyes?" Hotch spoke slowly, his brow furrowed.
Hissing air out between clenched teeth, frustrated, Emily had to concentrate on not snapping. "I was him. I knew what he felt, what he thought. I don't know how it happened – but I didn't imagine it, Hotch."
"What was he feeling?" JJ asked, blue eyes wary. They were gathered in her living room, JJ perched sedately on the arm of her couch. Morgan paced by her bookshelves, his expression ominous. Rossi and Hotch stood together, saying nothing.
She swallowed before answering. "Isolated. Scared. Mostly scared. Hungry."
High.
"Think like a profiler, not a friend," Rossi said, cutting in before JJ could say any of the thoughts that were racing across her distressed face. "You said to save him you'd profile him – well, you just got front row seats to his head. Profile away."
"I only got a split second," she argued, turning to face him because watching JJ try to process Reid's misery was painful. "I can't profile him on a split second spent in his mind while he was being tor…" She trailed off quickly, but they all knew what she was going to say.
Morgan growled, low and deep, and something small and primal in her brain screamed at her to run, run away from the predator.
When she ignored it and looked around at him, it wasn't he who looked dangerous.
JJ's eyes were winter storms and the air around her almost cracked with power. Everything in Emily told her that what brewed inside the sedate looking elf was deadly and unstoppable.
Good. She couldn't wait to aim that pointed fury at Foyet.
"Bullshit," Rossi said, straightening. His shadow curled around his feet, darkening with anger. "You wouldn't be working here if you couldn't. We profile with less every day; what are you keeping from us?"
Sergio's voice was a whisper. "Emily, I know you don't trust easily. But what more must these people do for you to trust them? They care for Reid just as much – if not more – as you do. And Rossi has proven himself five times over. Work with them."
She took a deep breath and stepped back, slipped away from Emily-girlfriend-of-Spencer, and towards Agent Prentiss. It was very much like wearing the mask of Elizabeth Prentiss' daughter, like she had on the first day of her employment here.
Sorry, Reid.
"Foyet has some control over him, not as much as we've been thinking. Hankel… Hankel has a lot more control. Reid lets him; he won't fight him as hard."
"Let him? Why the fuck would he let him?" snapped Morgan. Hotch's mouth thinned, and his eyes turned downward, almost open sorrow from the stoic man. He knew. He knew what she'd guessed already.
"Hankel protected him from Foyet. By the looks of it, it's a protective role he's taken numerous times over the past four months. Reid's reaction towards Hankel's presence as a result of this was distinctly… positive."
When response came, Morgan sounded almost hurt. "You didn't want to tell us he was exhibiting Stockholm? Christ, Emily, we're the last people to judge him for that. No shit he is, I'd be shocked if he wasn't. It's a survival technique, and I'm all for anything that involves 'not dying' on his behalf."
"How great is Hankel's influence over him?" Hotch kept his emotions out of his voice. He was a lot better at that since Gideon's death. While the rest of them had been rattled, almost broken, by the loss of one of their own, it had given their leader a focus he'd struggled to gain before.
Emily thought of the tightly restrained rush of almost-affection tempered with fear and longing in their chest when Hankel had moved between them and Foyet. It hadn't just been the promise of some kind of protection from pain, there had been something else there as well. Something that Hankel could offer him that he'd come to crave.
"Strong enough that I'm glad Foyet seems content to be the one attempting to give the orders," she said slowly. "He underestimates Hankel; he has no idea that Hankel's control is twice as strong as his is. If Foyet knew, if he'd taken advantage of that he would have turned Reid months ago."
"And we would be standing at the end of a long line of bodies," Sergio added cooly. Emily's stomach lurched into her throat.
"That fits his profile," JJ said, mouth twisting in distaste. "He can't bear for someone else to be in control."
She wasn't done. "They're using drugs," she said quickly, the words leaving a sour taste in her mouth. No one looked shocked. "Sergio smelled narcotics on him the night he came here, and he… his reactions were slower than they should have been when he tried to escape Foyet while I was in his mind. He stumbled. He didn't even realize I was there until I panicked. He should have noticed straight away; any other time we've communicated he has."
Hotch went to speak, but JJ, in a rare show of forcefulness, spoke over him. "Wait, what? Communicated via his mind? When? How?" Her voice was tight with surprise and something else. Something colder and worrying.
"Before, mostly," she replied, keeping her tone even. Mouth dry, it was harder to speak than she would have liked, especially as JJ paled. "We… I don't know how. We could speak via our minds quite easily. We thought it was unusual, but I guess… we never got around to working out why."
"What does it matter?" Morgan resumed his pacing, picking the books out of her shelf restlessly and putting them back with barely a glance. "It's a good thing, right? It means Prentiss can look in on him, make sure he's alive. Maybe see something more that could help us find him. He can't tell us where he is - but maybe he can think it and she can pick up on that."
Hotch was staring at JJ. "JJ?" he asked, slowly. "Morgan's right. We can use this to our advantage, however it came about."
Blue eyes met hers and in them was an accusation and an apology all at once. There was a rush of sick heat in Emily's belly that travelled up to her face, the premonition of something terrible coming.
"We thought it was odd he was bound so easily," she murmured, biting her lip. "But… if he was speaking to you, his shields were down. His shields were down so he could talk to you, and that's how they gained access before we could find him."
The heat became a rushing torrent of cold that drowned everything out around her.
Her fault. His pain, their loss, Gideon's death; all tied to that singular moment sitting on the medic's bed when they'd touched their minds and sealed their fates. She'd thought at that moment it was risky. She'd said nothing.
This was all her fault.