The Art of Butterflies

"I will be your guardian
When all is crumbling
Steady your hand

You can never say never
Why we don't know when
Time, time and time again
Younger now then we were before."

-Never Say Never by the Fray

There was a cold, gripping panic that came with letting her out of their sight again. The panic was cold shards of ice running through their bloodstreams, reaching every faction of their bodies. The panic stung in Prentiss' fingers and slowed her breath. The icy panic numbed Hotch's thoughts and closed an icy fingered hand around his heart. Neither spoke of the panic to the other – one look at each other while leaving the hospital room had been enough for them to know that they felt the same.

It made no difference that the liaison would be in good hands. That fact did nothing to stem their illogical panic. She'd been missing for nearly twenty hours – letting her go now felt like failure all over again.

Moments before, Dr. Jackie had arrived back at their hospital room. After closing his call with JJ, he'd been connected with his fiancé's doctor. The call had come at just the right time – a nurse had come in to check over the media liaison and proclaimed her to be ready for surgery. Dr. Jackie had explained that they'd be taking "Mrs. Jareau" down for surgery.

Now, the two Behavioral Analysis Unit Agents walked, side by side, back towards where the rest of their team was waiting. It had been hard enough to leave her without thinking about the fact that there was always the chance she could die during surgery. That fact was too painful to think about. The agents dealt with the possibility that, every day they went to work, they might not return home that night. This – it was different.

They were silent as they entered the elevator, heading back down to the emergency room.

It was strange, what the elevator did for them – in the silence of the enclosed box, Prentiss found her voice again. It wasn't a question of whether or not the man had heard the conversation she'd had with JJ – he'd been right outside the door. Even if he hadn't been listening, he would have heard it.

She shifted from her right foot to the left. Her dark hair was normally tied up tightly in a pony tail. She hadn't bothered to fix it after rescuing Jennifer Jareau –strands now fell in disarray around her eyes.

"We found her." She began by stating the obvious as the elevator descended, her dark eyes on the silver elevator doors. It reflected a dim outline of the two agents, distorted and warped in its silver reflection.

"It's not over, Prentiss." He assured her. His eyes moved from the red LED numbers counting down the floors to the woman standing next to him.

"Didn't say it was, Hotch." She answered. "Just that we found her." The profiler allowed herself the smallest of smiles at that thought – because, even though they weren't out of the woods yet, that one fact was true. They had their liaison back – she might not be whole, but she was back with them. Before, they weren't able to help her – now, it was up to them to help her out of the woods, instead of having the ball be in Bennett's court.

"This isn't your fault, Hotch." She said, meeting his eyes. She could see his guilt in the way he was standing – she wouldn't be good at her job if she couldn't do that. When she met his eyes, she could see the pain that was living there – different from the pain that JJ was experiencing. His was the pain that came from watching another's pain and feeling responsible for it – being able to do almost nothing at all to stop it.

His mind went back to the ambulance ride as the elevator counted down, and his promise to himself that he'd show her she didn't have to be unbreakable to be strong. He intended to keep that promise. "I wish we could have done something sooner."

His voice sounded broken, showing to her those rare seconds of emotion the unflappable man hardly ever showed to anyone. "Hotch-"

"No, I know we did everything we could." The profiler said; his eyes on the red number 2 that flashed above the elevator doors.

"We did." She assured him, even though she wasn't convinced of it herself. She wondered if that fact came across in her voice. Prentiss allowed herself to smile toward her boss. "I think hearing Will's voice? It helped her, Hotch."

The elevator number read 1, beeping its arrival on the final floor. "It was a good move." He assured her, touching her shoulder briefly before the silver doors of the elevator slid open, revealing a hallway full of hurrying doctors and nurses.

Together, they traveled down the hallway leading to the emergency room. The unit chief hadn't seen any of his team – besides Prentiss – since stepping into the ambulance with JJ. The last time he'd seen most of his team had been prior to Reid, Prentiss, and himself stepping out of the headquarters to investigate the possible kidnapping of Robin Briggs. The last time he'd seen Reid, the young man had given a touching speech to JJ, one that he'd yet to acknowledge him for.

The nurses and doctors were a familiar sight – when you were in the FBI, your co-workers ended up in the hospital a lot more than if you worked at P.C. Richards. The BAU had, so far, been vaguely lucky – most of their team's visits to the hospital had not been for a life threatening reason. Yes, there had been plenty of instances in which Reid managed to get himself caught in some ridiculous situation and Hotch had insisted on him visiting the hospital, there had been times when Morgan's hero complex had gone too far … but this was one of those times where more than someone's pride was at stake.

Walking down the hallway towards the emergency room, Hotch held out a hand to stop Prentiss as they began to pass the café – it had been a long time since any of them had eaten – or slept, for that matter – and he knew that none of his team would be leaving the hospital until they received news of her.

--

In the emergency room, the Behavioral Analysis Unit and Special Agent Jordan Todd waited anxiously for news of Jennifer Jareau. It had been nearly an hour since they'd last received news of her - the last time had been when Dr. Jackie had brought Prentiss to her hospital room. For many, an hour would not be considered a long time - but for the agents who had searched for her for most of twenty hours, that single hour felt like a lifetime. It was one more hour where they had no news of her, one more hour where they could not see her, assure themselves that Prentiss, Reid, and Hotch had indeed rescued their liaison.

It was as if they'd sectioned off their own corner of the emergency room - the far right corner consisted solely of the agents as they impatiently waited.

It was only Jordan Todd who seemed to be able to sit without some form of constant movement - trying not to rock the boat that she felt she'd stepped into without permission. Her hands were clasped lightly in her lap, her brown eyes on the desk some feet away from them, hoping and praying for news of the woman she'd come to the team to save.

The rest of the agents were in some form of constant motion. Derek Morgan was the most animated of the group, his pacing steps taking him back and forth in front of the agents; he was the only one who refused to sit. Dark eyes flickered back and forth from where he knew Hotch and Prentiss would eventually emerge, to the team, and back again. He couldn't sit still - he never could in situations such as these.

Spencer Reid's foot tapped anxiously on the floor; he chewed on his thumbnail nervously. A magazine sat unopened on his lap - reading wasn't going to hold his attention just then. He could not imagine being drawn in by the printed word at this very moment, the articles failed to capture him. All that his eyes could see was the repeated image of her blue eyes staring back at him, so alone even with them finally there. The young man pressed a hand to his eyes, wanting to eradicate the image. At the same time, however, he never wanted to forget what humans could do if they chose so - because that was the drive that made him want to do this job. He couldn't - wouldn't - let that happen to another person. It was the promise that they each made to themselves at the end of every night - what kept them coming back in the morning - and the promise that they knew they would fail during each case.

David Rossi was the most physically still, next to Jordan Todd - his constant movement was silent, in his thoughts. He was one of the people who hadn't seen her yet - only Reid, Prentiss, and Hotch had had that privilege. His eyes kept traveling back to the distressed young man, wondering what he'd seen - even though he and Prentiss had explained to them her condition, he still could not fathom it. From the day that he'd first seen her, she'd always had that fire about her - dedication, commitment, a drive that many people didn't have - the drive that had propelled her to work for the BAU. The author and profiler could not imagine her without that fire - it was wrong. He'd seen FBI agents fallen before, seen them dissolve quickly - and knew instantly that this team was not going to let that happen to her. He was still the newcomer on this team - still learning the true meaning of working on a team and not as a singular agent - but he knew that this team was more like a family than any team he'd seen so far; he was proud to be on it.

"Morgan, sit down." She was not in the high spirits to use some nickname between the two of them - she used his name, plain and simple. There was pain in her voice. "You've got to be exhausted." She said, watching the man pace back and forth in front of them. He shook his head, his dark eyes holding anger - anger that she knew was not towards her, but towards himself - for not being there, for not being able to get to her sooner - but mostly for the man that had dared to do this to one of his team. The technical analyst couldn't let her mind imagine what JJ would look like, or what she had gone too - she knew all too well what she would have gone through. She'd seen footage of similar abductions. She wasn't free of those mental images just because she did not go on the field. If she were to imagine these things, she would fall apart. The mere thought of what she might have gone through constricted her heart and sent tears running for her eyes.

None of them noticed exhaustion or hunger any longer – these things that they'd felt while working the case were lost among the fury and worry of waiting.

The silence was the sixth person in the room, a tangible object that was shattered by the approach of Prentiss and Hotch, who were carrying breakfast – bagels and coffee.

"How is she, Hotch?" Rossi was the first to speak, locking eyes with the younger agent. He wondered if the man knew just how worn down he appeared. Hotch's eyes held the tired quality that one only got from the stress that came with cases – his stress was amplified by the nature of this case. The sleeves of his white dress shirt had splatterings of blood on them, red in stark contrast against the white.

"She's been taken down to surgery." Hotch informed them, handing over a coffee and bagel. Rossi accepted, but made no move to eat. "Will and Henry will be arriving within the hour." Hotch continued.

Reid seemed to acknowledge that fact the most fully – he met eyes with Prentiss for a brief instance, knowing as she did what JJ had asked in the garage. The dark haired woman nodded; Reid confirmed this with a nod of his own. He knew now that she'd been sent to JJ to do – and it had worked. He had new respect for the woman.

Hotch handed the rest of the coffees and bagels over to their teammates. Each of them seemed to decide that they weren't hungry – they couldn't consider food while they were so anxious.

"Her fever went down some." Hotch continued. "And they're considering her to be safe for anesthesia."

"Dr. Jackie said she was having problems with men …" Morgan left the question open, his dark eyes going even darker with the anger that he'd left unspoken.

"It hasn't improved much, but Will was a giant step." Hotch assured him of that last part. "It's natural with someone who's undergone what she did." He hated to standardize her like that.

"But that man … he didn't, I mean, the doctor would have told us, right?" Garcia asked, her eyes darting between Hotch and Prentiss.

"They did a rape kit." Hotch answered. "She wasn't." His answer solicited a sigh of relief from several of the BAU agents. "I think he tried to – enough to scare her." His jaw tightened as he thought of what she'd have to have gone through.

Morgan's fist tightened. "That sick bastard." Protectiveness swarmed up in him. As with Reid, he considered the liaison part of his family. She was a sister of sorts, and he couldn't even think about someone trying to do that to her. He considered all of the BAU to be his family – and no one hurt his family.

"We're lucky he allowed her to stay alive for so long – she's strong." Hotch spoke the truth. "From what I got, he was waiting for her to break before he ended it." He remembered back to the ride in the ambulance. He didn't know of many people who would have stayed as strong as she did for such an amount of time.

Morgan ran a hand over his head, pushing a breath out between his teeth. Whatever he was going to say was lost in the arrival of a doctor. The man's face was humorless, his eyes a steely gray. His dark hair was cropped short, and his eyes were fixed on the group before him. He couldn't have been younger than forty.

"You're the federal agents I was told to contact when Anthony Bennett was ready to be interviewed?" The man didn't appear to be at all pleased by being removed from his job, but the agents before him had seen the attitude before; it didn't faze them. The doctors eyes said that he had more important things to be doing than reporting to agents from the FBI.

"Behavioral Analysis Unit from Quantico, Virginia." Hotch said, indicating his team quickly. The doctor's eyes grew even more annoyed at learning they were 'mind hunters'. Hotch viewed the doctor with a steady gaze. "Special Agent Morgan and I will be interviewing Bennett."

TBC

Author's Note:

This chapter had to be the longest one in the history of The Art of Butterflies. I'm a bit unsure about it, but what else is new? xD I'm hoping that you enjoyed it – there will be several more chapters – including the interview referenced in this one.

If there's anything that I can ask, it's to please review! Even if you hated the chapter. :)

-SSW