Hi guys! Sorry I couldn't update yesterday, I just didn't have much time. So enjoy this chapter and please leave suggestions!
Morgan, JJ and Prentiss walked back to the house together. The last thing that they had expected was for Sam to take his own life. They thought that it would be theirs that he would try to take. The other officers who had been chasing Sam had taken the body and left the team to deal with Alec.
The whole walk was silent, except for the sounds of their heavy breathing, as they were all lost in their own thoughts and they hardly noticed when they were at the Greene household again. The back was empty so they moved around to the front of the rotting house to find all the action.
There were many officers and other volunteers trying to crowd Devona but Hotch and Rossi were holding them all back. Prentiss watched as her best friend's daughter was introduced to Gideon for the first time. She wondered if she even had the right to call herself one of Reid's best friends anymore, it had been 16 years since they'd seen each other. They kept in contact through email but there was a good 5 years, the last 5 years, where Prentiss lost contact with the whole team due to her busy job.
Devona looked so small and weak with the white towel wrapped around her shoulders. But Prentiss knew that she wasn't, despite the fact that she didn't reply through those 5 years, the team still kept in touch and Prentiss still read all the emails and letters. The letters being mostly from Reid. Reid liked to send pictures, which Prentiss loved. She had printed out so many and had most of them on her desk at work, if not there, then beside her bed in her room. Reid had told Prentiss about Devona's bullies and how Morgan had started training her to fight. With Morgan as a teacher, there was no way you could be weak.
Prentiss strode up to Devona and she turned towards her. Devona was looking strangely at her and Prentiss realized that she had a ridiculous smile on her face.
"Devona, nice to finally meet you! I'm Emily Prentiss, I used to work on the team. 19 years ago now," Prentiss explained. She desperately wanted to tell Devona how much she looked like her father, but decided not to because she'd just heard Gideon say the same thing.
"I've heard so much about you! I'm so glad to finally meet you!" Devona said excitedly. So Reid has told her about me. Prentiss thought.
Hotch approached Morgan once Devona was safely inside the ambulance and he didn't have to worry about keeping the crowd away anymore.
Morgan, JJ nor Prentiss had said a word about Sam since they'd returned. Hotch seemed to be reading their emotions correctly because they all read that Sam was dead. Hotch just needed reassurance. He wanted to make sure that the man who hurt his niece and friend was dead.
"Morgan, what happened with Sam?" Hotch asked.
"He was ahead of us, he could have easily gotten away if he'd kept going, but he stopped. He turned around and shot himself. I don't get it," Morgan explained while still staring off into the distance.
"Maybe he was tired of running. Where's the body?" Hotch asked.
"The other officers took it. I think we have bigger problems at the moment though. Alec Greene. Dev told me that he didn't do anything. He was unarmed when we searched him," Morgan said.
"I believe Devona, but was he really trying to save her, or was he giving her false hope? And will the others believe her?" Hotch wondered.
"He'll have to go to court and I guess they'll decide. But Devona's going to have to attend and I'm worried because it was a traumatic time she went through and she might not want to relive it," Morgan said.
"And if we want to keep an innocent man out of prison then she's going to have to attend," said Hotch.
Devona lay on the stretcher as the paramedics examined her. They both seemed like nice people, there were one man and one woman. They were dressed all in white and had a clean smell to them.
The woman was Dr. Yabarak and she had a strong Australian accent and red hair with bangs. The man was Dr. Parker who had blonde hair. Devona couldn't look at Dr. Parker because of his bright blue eyes that reminded her so much of Sam.
They were going to try and remove the bullets from her shoulder and knee but they wanted to wait until they were on smoother ground. It wasn't too serious so it could wait. Devona didn't have many serious injuries but she would definitely need stitches on her bullets wounds and some of her deeper cuts. The searing pain was causing her vision to go fuzzy but she wasn't going to have to deal with that for long because Dr. Parker was going to freeze her wounds so she wouldn't be able to feel a thing.
"You're lucky," Dr. Parker commented.
"What do you mean?" Devona asked, avoiding his gaze.
"That bullet could have become dangerous, but I guess you tried to take it out and that prevented it from happening," he replied.
Devona immediately thought of Alec. So he had helped her in a way. Devona almost regretted what she'd said to Hotch but Alec didn't deserve to go to prison for what his father forced him into doing. Though she still couldn't believe that he tricked her like that. At some point she knew that Alec would have to go to court to prove his innocence and if he didn't play along then he would be sent away and Devona would probably get in more trouble from Hotch and the rest of the team. Mostly Hotch. She needed to talk to Alec alone about the situation but she wasn't sure that her father would let him anywhere near her until he was proven innocent.
The road became smoother and Dr. Yabarak and Dr. Parker glaced at each other.
"OK Devona, we're going to try to get the bullets out now. We're staring with the shoulder seeing as it's the most fatal," Dr. Yabarak said.
The ride to the hospital was a painless experience for Devona but with all the tools being stuck in her body, all trying to remove the bullet at once, is was nauseating seeing it all. The occasional bump in the road didn't help. By the time they arrived at the hospital, no one had managed to remove the bullet. Which meant, with Reid's permission, Devona had to have surgery to get it removed. But Devona really didn't care anymore.
"Family is not an important thing. Family is everything."
-Michael J. Fox
