A/N:

First of all I wanna apologize for the long delay! But at least it's not as long as the last delay was. Or so I think.

Thank you crazyobsession101, Callygirl80 and sarahb2007 for your reviews to chapter 24 and 12wallflower for giving me feedback on the first chapter. I loved to read evidence for both, people continuing to read this story and new people giving it a chance. Thanks a lot!

Again, this chapter hasn't been beta-ed. Hopefully later, but I could hardly wait to update this story.

I would love to get some more reviews! I'm proud to say that I have become a regular reviewer to some of the stories which I read on a regular basis so I know that it takes little effort to write what you liked or didn't like about the chapter - but it will make a certain somebody really, really happy.

I still don't own Criminal Minds, but Criminal Minds owns my heart!

Oh, and you should really watch "The Big Bad Swim". It's an independent movie featuring Paget Brewster, fully uploaded on Youtube (in 10 parts) and super awesome!

I've also started a new story, so you might go to my profile to check out "The Candyman Can!". It's supposed to be gruesome, featuring Foyet and Will.

However... hope you like this chapter!

- AJ

At this point I would like to voice a brief warning:

While my own laptop plainly broke (I lost almsot the entire rough draft of this chapter), my mother's old laptop, which I got to use after mine began to fuck with me again, got a destructive virus while I was on this site. It's a german one (so don't worry about getting the exact same one), which pretends to be a ban of the federal police. It claims that the owner downloaded child pornography or data that contains material showing violence against children or sodomy and then they want you to transfer them some money to un-ban the computer. This is, of course, ridiculous. You can as well, as I did, format the harddrive and newly install the operating system but then all your data will be lost.

So what I really wanna say is: There are these times when you click on a user's profile and you're redirected to some pop-up like site and these are full of viruses! Always update your virus scanner, firewall and whatnot! Just be careful & use protection. ;)

Thank you.

Musty water soaked her clothes and made her flesh crawl. Its smell seemed to pierce marrow and bone, now that her most acute worry was lying lifeless on the floor and her senses enabled to detect other surrounding stimuli. Emily had allowed herself to sit down for a moment and to quake with cold and commotion but as her adrenaline level sunk fear and disgust slowly began to overtake her mind. She had lost her sense of time, though she knew that she had been resting longer than reasonable, but couldn't convince herself to get up again. The rollercoaster of emotions and turning points she had been through had not passed her by without leaving their marks and right now she didn't feel like going through it one more time.

Giving up and nascent hope, pride and humility, the face of death and a sting of life had gotten the best of her and left a staggering, essentially noble-minded but self-overburdened person.

The interpenetrating creak of the door hinge eventually forced Emily to focus on her current situation. She slowly got back to her feet, fighting another wave of pain which flashed through her head and made it spin. A thin line of light fell into the room, followed by a cold draught.

"Sorry Cullin, but I think we'll need to change out plans. Blaine saw a car and we need to get this over with as quick as possible. I'll give the two of you a grant and a car and you can spend the night however you like to."

An unwitting gasp escaped Emily's mouth as it was Doyle's voice instead of Blaine's which she recognized. As frightened as she had faced being raped by two perverted creepers it were Doyle's attempts to winkle out of her where she had brought Deklan to which she feared more.. The door was kicked open and before either of them knew what was going on they stood face to face to each other. None of them had expected a situation like this to occure. For a moment their breaths rose to the ceiling in silvery, swirling clouds. They went slowly and calm and there was nothing but quiete and a hint of peace filling the air.

It was the silence before the storm, utterly perfect and fragile by nature.

"What the hell did you do to hi-?"

Doyle's voice broke the silence and compelled hell to break loose, but Emily didn't even give him the time to finish his sentence. She dashed off to somehow fight the man in front of her or at least run away from him, in the hope that she would be quicker than the reflexively grip of his hand to his gun. But Doyle didn't reach for his gun at all. It was over as surprizingly quick as it had begun. His strong hand clasped her arm roughly and slammed her to the side against the wall, while his free hand got a firm grab to her throat. Its knuckles were pressed deep into the soft tissue under her skin but this and the pain originating from the poorly healing strangulation marks that were already there weren't bothering her much.

A wicked grin spreaded out all over Doyle's face. He tightened his grip and chuckled to himself, taking note of the mark weakness had already left on her neck. "As I see you aren't interested in staying here much longer anyways."

Emily didn't answer but closed her eyes and tried to get a gulp of air. First her lunge but soon after every cell of her body seemed to burn with the voracious need for oxigen. How, for cripes' sake, had she been able to do this to herself, to want something like this to happen?

She struggled in a last attempt to break free of him. His hands seemed to be strong as iron and she was too burnt out to resist them.

"We can shorten this. You know what I want, so... I guess I can do to you what you want, too."

She used the last bit of air to force out a fuzzy "I won't tell you anything". The darkish room around her faint to pitch black. Only Doyle's face remained in front of her eyes. Her blurred sight of him revealed the monster that he truly was. Her eyelids dropped as she was about to lose consciousness, her legs gave in underneath her and she felt how the touch of his hand to her throat became even harder and invincible for her whole weight lay on his hands.

The darkness was cold but held nonetheless the ease that she had been looking for.

Emily didn't realize how he was taking both his hands off of her, how she dropped down onto the floor unfettered, how she breathed stertorously and how the man who wouldn't let her die just yet carefully lifted her up to carry her away.

It was almost ironic that Emily seemed to wake up due to a heavy headache. Her head was spinning and even though she vaguely remembered that she had been injured worse it was the only thing she was able to focus on... or the only thing she discerned considering that it was what marred her concentration.

Doyle had strapped her arms and legs to a chair with cable fixers tightly enough that they were superficially cutting into her skin even though she didn't trie to secede. The whole situation wasn't a pleasant repetition but meant at least that Doyle would try to make her talk and not let Blain come close to her. Every bit of spared suffering counted.

As Emily blinked a couple of times and took a deep breath she noticed two heavy combat boots standing on the ground in front of her. She didn't rise her head to look at the man who was wearing them.

"It's a pity I didn't get to shoot you the last time." She sounded hoarse but her head was pounding at the low voiced words.

"I know what that feels like."

"You failed doing that twice. And for all good things come in threes I guess Imma be lucky one more time, right?"

He laughter sounded like a dog's barking. "Yeah, I beg to doubt that you'll consider yourself lucky in about... well, already, actually."

"Allez en enfer."

"Geez, we already talked about this. I'll take you with me, at all costs."

"Oh then... here I am. You got what you want, y'are happy now?"

"You're not what I want, Emily, and you know it. I must admit that I was surprized when my men told me that you returned to DC. I've been to your grave twice, you know, and I wonder whether they'll get you a new tombstone or just reuse the one you already have. You've got a beautiful grave there and there funeral was... moving, to say the least. heart-wrenching. I honestly thought you were dead... but after you made the great mistake to tell me about my son I should have seen this coming. You don't have the stones - neither to kill nor to die."

"I have them now, don't I?" She spoke a little slurred and as the words made their way through her mouh they left an oblong streak of fire in her gorge. "I said I'd end you and as it looks right now I'll probably end here by myself... but you know what? It's worth a try."

"Awesome try. It looks like you're totaly getting the chance of trying", Doyle answered with dry sarcasm and the knowledge that he was telling the truth stung like acid that was pulsing in her venes through her entire body, "Not to mention the possibility of actual success."

"I won the last couple of times. You won't hear as much as a whiff of anything concerning Declan and I'll win again."

"You?", Doyle spat and tried to spit on her face, sprinkling the parting of her hair with a tenous drizzel of his saliva, "you don't have anything but fear and guilt upon your shoulders. An innocent child might die due to your failure. The mother is hurt, too. Your friends know you betrayed them and my son does probably not remember me. You are tearing apart the families you're getting close to and you know it just as well as the ones whom you have hurt. You are here because you have no place to go to, because nobody wants you but you can't be all alone either because even you aren't able to get along with yourself. We are paying the price for your closeness."

She was chocking. "You aren't... I'm not... I'm here because I needed to-"

"-save your friends, aka family? Then isn't this right? Am I not telling it just the way it is?"

"No!"

"Haha, oh Emily - I am so right and you're seeing it, too!"

The air in the room became rare and unsaturated. Emily's breathing frequency accelerated and a struggling attempt to calm it down by closing her eyes failed. Pictures of the video of JJ and Henry raced through her mind, accompanied by a ghostly reverberation of Danny Boy. Her heart pounding like mad she panted for air, terribly aware that Doyle was being a witness to this. She felt the panic rise, grow, expand in her chest until it felt like it was about to crush her. She heard Doyle sight and move around, he was about as surprised at her reaction as she was, and the thought that this wouldn't feel as bad if he would strangulate her again occurred to her just as she felt the sting of an injection needle stabbing in the side of her neck muscles.

"Awesome, we're just going to hasten this a little."

"What-?", she mumbled muzzily, not fainting but being quiete close to it. His face came close to hers until she felt his breath waft over her cheeks. Spearmint toothpaste. Unexpected.

"Where is Deklan?", he asked softly. The sound of his voice invaded her ears twisted and green.

He's drugging me! Her mind was barely agile enough to understand what this meant. She shut her eyes tightly and opened them up to a worse scene.

There is a certain sort of nightmares where you're all by yourself in a great, fantastic world which is populated by the most colourful grimasces, showmen or whatever. People being half men half bird, spitting rainbows and music. And you're drowning, perishing under the swell of the ununderstandable.

"Where is he, Emily?" His tone rose and became more urgent, "Where is he?"

She shook her head and the image in front of her eyes liquefied.

"No... no... let me..."

"It's one small word... just tell me where he is, Emily, please... tell me, come on..."

A deep breath brought a ray of light to her jag and the idea of fortitude made it into the word. "Never."

Doyle giggled. He turned around, vanished from her tunnel-like field of view to return only seconds later, carrying a tray on which a selection of filled syringes lay, and became the evil clown-surgeon in the centre of every paradise-nightmare land.

"I know many and many ways to get what I desire and, yes, you beat me twice. But it's not over yet. Because I always, always get it in the end. You think I cannot break you?"

Cold sweat was brought to her brows, by his words probably as much as by the drug. She couldn't bring out a sole word.

"I'd rather- I- I'd rather die than... tell you anything."

"Emily Prentiss, I solemnly swear that you will be broken."

Alpha 46 Tango... wasn't as easy to find as they had assumed. Reid had understood the system of streets, numbers, phoenetic alphabet letters and buildings quickly and was leading them safely through the dark maze of scrapped grey buildings but they were going a long way. The genius eagerly fingered his gun which was, first of all, an unusual habit which didn't go unnoticed by Hotch and Ashley and, secondly, a rather concerning that it was him and he was getting closer and closer to its safetly catch.

"Okay Reid, where now-"

"Right, left, right, right, left. Then right and-"

"Just go one by one."

"Okay. Go right then."

"And faster, maybe", Ashley interjected, "these streets are straight and I don't think we need to expect any contraflow, righ?"

Without a comment Hotch steppt on the gas and floored it, even though he was already going a lot faster than recommended. Reid's hands stopped fiddling around with his gun and he both clenched them to fists. Both Ashley and Hotch felt, for a moment, sorry for scaring him, not feeling to comfortable either at the thought of the black ice that was probably hid underneath the thick layer of snow. But Reid swallowed the urge to express his worries and underpin them by giving some smart statistics.

Reid and Ashley gasped simultaneously and even Hotch's features visibly tensed as they slithered through a sharp curve. The tires spun for a moment and they prepared to rush into the wall to their left just before they got grip again and raced on.

"Next go left."

They lurched and scratched a wall with the right back fender. Reid jelped and Hotch slowed the car down until he had fully control over the vehicle dying in some accident while Emily was killed by Dolye wouldn't bring anyone any good. They would risk their lifes soon enough, this wasn't the time for running any needless risks.

"Hold on... just hang in there some more time..."

Hotch glanced at the clock on his dashboard. Ashley followed his glance and burried her head in her hands. They were running out of time. Emily would probably not be dead by the time they arrived but worse things than death could have happened to her then

"It is so late."

A/N:

Ever since I got rid of my stupid french class I enjoy making use of french words so I couldn't resist to use at least a few of them in here.

Allez en enfer means go to hell.

But for it's second plural it's the polite form, so no swearing or anything in this chapter (yes, I'm super-polite, how awesome is that?)! :D