Title: The Waste Land
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Team-centric - gen
Genre: Drama/Suspense
Summary: Part Two: Reid is missing, JJ is in surgery and the unsub they're trying to catch isn't the unsub they should be worried about. The fallout from this case will change their lives in the way they most fear.
Warnings: Character Death
The Waste Land
Part Two: A Thunderstorm
'When you're dead you're dead.'
Kurt Vonnegut
'One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.'
Emily Dickinson – One Need Not Be A Chamber to Be Haunted
Chapter Ten – Back Into Your System (Prentiss)
Her heart pumps through her chest, beats coming so fast that it's almost as though there are two hearts, fighting for dominance. It's just the kind of pop culture reference that Reid would have gotten, and she manages to crack a half smile at the thought.
It doesn't last long though – the Kevlar that she's strapping on, and the gun at her hip and the dead, dead silence that hangs over them are just more reminders about how badly this could end.
Rain falls gently from the sky; light, drifting drops that give off an air of tranquility. Even mother nature lies sometimes. Everybody lies.
Emily Prentiss had grown up in an environment that was wrought with untruths and half-truths and quasi-truths. She'd long since learnt not to take honesty for granted, but at the same time, it's something she respects in a person.
She'd never had the chance to believe in Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, and it's that lack of innocence that had made hope a pretty tricky concept to believe in. It's taken Emily this long to see the best in people, rather than the worst. That's not just about her childhood – that's about people disregarding her skills, and assuming that because of who she is, she'd be willing to lie, to cheat, to spy her way to the top.
If nothing else, being part of this team has shown her the true meaning of loyalty. And that's why it's going to hurt so much if they're torn apart like this.
This part of the city is sparsely populated. Harder to hear the screams, her mind tells her. When all of this is over, she's going to buy a chocolate fudge sundae, and she is damn well going to enjoy it.
S.W.A.T. moves in first, half of them through the front entrance with Morgan and Rossi, and the rest through the back. Any windows are fairly high up, so that means that this will go down one of two ways.
The two possibilities for any raid; either the unsub goes down quietly, or he goes down shooting. Going by the profile, this unsub will take the second option, and it isn't comforting in the very least, even if the profile has recently been thrown into turmoil.
The first few rooms are cleared, and Emily has that feeling of foreboding at the back of her mind. The place feels empty, the same way that her condo does after she hasn't been home in three weeks, and the echoing sound of her footsteps make her feel ridiculously lonely.
There is something ridiculously wrong here.
Really, ridiculously wrong.
Hotch sees it first, and he freezes to a halt beside her. She follows his gaze to the far wall, though it's so big it's a wonder that it's not the first thing that she'd noticed. At least ten feet high, and drawn entirely in blood.
The eye of providence.
Her stomach roils. There are over five quarts of blood in the human body, according to Reid. She doesn't know how many it would take to do this, but it's fresh blood, and she doesn't even want to think about what that means for Reid.
'We profiled that he would stop trying to emulate the Reaper,' Emily says, her voice soft. If she speaks any louder, then Hotch will be able to hear the tremble.
'We did,' Hotch confirms, and just as Emily keeps her words soft, Hotch keeps his short, though she has never heard so much as a tremble in his voice in the entire time that she's known him.
'We've got a body!' one of the S.W.A.T. guys calls out from the next room, and everything comes crashing down.