We're are getting closer to the end of this story, I swear :)

It Takes Two.

She was being choked.

Large hands were tightening around her throat, pressure upon her body so that she couldn't move.

Two withered cadavers laughed maniacally in the background. Screaming and pointing their elongated grey fingers at her. Their twisted and browned nails wriggling and curling in the darkened house. The attic room. Barring her from a comfortable sleeping place or nearing any warmth. Their deadened silvery hair wrapping tightly around her neck too. With each moment passing, hands and ropes of hair tightened, tightened and choked her. Stopped her from breathing, took away her will to live, her will to fight. She was losing the battle for dominance. Snow White was coming into the forefront.

I can help, I can stop this.

No, this is not happening to me, not now.

We have to wait. This should not be happening yet.

Yes, stall him. But how?

I know how…trust me.

"Married…we must be married!" She screamed in her head. But was it Emily or Snow White who had had that idea. She didn't know, she didn't care…it had worked! The hands and the demon-hair picked her up and snapped her back to the ground. She felt a dull ache spreading around the back of her head. Snapping noises, rages, glass and wood and wax fell about the room, but she couldn't see. Black was seeping into her vision. The corpses and the hands, they left her for a while…but the terror remained.

She woke up in terror. Gasping for breath, pulling at the sheets tucked up under her chin. They felt constricting and suffocating. The memories poured into her mind, spread through all of her defensive walls. But it helped, in a strange way. She could see the line again. The one that divided Snow White from Emily. She wanted to be Emily. She understood that Emily had the priority. Snow White was not to be permanent, but she would be here for a while yet. They had unfinished business, the woman and the prince.

"Emily?" Hotch grabbed at her hand. He felt the urge to smooth back her tousled hair, but resisted. If she were Snow White, she wouldn't appreciate it, and if she were Emily…she still might not.

"Hotch," she sighed. "Bad dream."

"Memory or construction?" It was always easier to talk about things if you distanced yourself from it.

"Both…I think."

"Both?" He wanted her to talk, since he'd ordered everyone to back off and let her rest, they had been watching over her in self-appointed shifts. He'd only relieved Morgan fifteen minutes ago. But if she wasn't up to talking, he really didn't want to push her.

"I need to talk to Tobey." She wasn't looking at him, but at least she seemed in control of herself. She wasn't fidgeting.

"I know. We need you; to find the other bodies…"

Emily nodded, somehow she knew it would come down to her. She'd had to save herself from Tobey in the large room; nobody had helped her then, except Snow White. But Snow White was a part of herself, so essentially she really had been saving herself. And out there in that snow-filled clearing, nobody had really helped her except herself. When she had walked away from Tobey, intent on going back to the house, she knew he would have let her. She shuddered. She didn't want to think about what would have had to happen when they both returned to the house.

Hotch helped Emily get discharged from the hospital. There were no serious injuries from her time with Tobey O'Conner. It had occurred to him that they still hadn't found out if she'd been sexually assaulted. Hotch had just assumed that if she had she would have already informed the consulting doctor and had all the necessary tests. He wanted to ask. To make sure she was okay. But he didn't want to know. Could he handle that information? Could he truly live with the fact that one of his team had been assaulted that way when they should have been safe?

He had noticed that JJ and Garcia seemed to be struggling with approaching Emily too. JJ couldn't get within ten feet of her without breaking down in tears and sobs. Garcia flitted about like she usually did, but there was an element of unease. A second-guessing of herself that Hotch hadn't seen since the third month she'd joined the BAU as their primary technical analyst.

Reid seemed the least affected by Emily's abduction. But perhaps he was biding his time, or occupying his time with machinations within his own mind, possibly working out the best way the approach the subject. Who truly knew what went on in Reid's mind.

Morgan couldn't stand it any longer. No matter how painful the information might be, he needed to know. Thankfully, Emily was awake when he entered her hotel room.

"Hey girl." He started.

"Morgan." She answered. He wasn't quite sure who he was talking to though. He'd done it before, started talking to Emily and a few minutes in realized it wasn't her looking at him. That it was Snow White, it was disconcerting…she was disconcerting. He didn't like talking to Snow White. She was…pliable, weak in a 'follow-the-leader' way. She was like a submissive puppy, the lowest dog in the pack. If you had your 'Alpha-dog', then Snow White was your 'Omega-dog'. The last. If he thought about it for too long, the 'perfectness' of her freaked him out. He enjoyed women who had spirit and personality. He never wanted to get sucked into a cookie-cutter relationship - at home with the cleavers-type family. He wanted fiery temper, laughs, intelligent kookiness…he wanted a different woman everyday. His perfect woman was going to be hard to find, but he wasn't ready to find her yet. He just didn't want anyone destroying the women in his life who could potentially be that girl. Garcia, Prentiss, even JJ had that undercurrent of kookiness in her.

"I wanted to ask you about what happened with Tobey. When you were on his property." He didn't want to look her in the eye, but he had to. This was one of his closest friends. He could take whatever she could handle, whatever she had gone through he would be able to look her in the eye and handle it too. He forced himself to look at her.

Her head was slightly tilted, he knew that was a mannerism of Snow White, his eyes squinted, "I want to talk to Emily."

She blinked slowly; it seemed as if her whole body was thinking one single thought.

"Derek." Her whole body seemed to relax. "What did you want to know…exactly?"

"We know from the first two bodies that he assaulted them, and we also know that, from Claudia Hawkner; she's the previous victim. We know that, well, we know that he…" Argh! His mind shouted in frustration. Why was this so hard to say?

Emily smiled slowly, a small smirk at the corner of her mouth. "Raped her?" She didn't find the situation amusing, but she did find Morgan's attitude to questioning her about it funny. She had rarely seen him so flustered. Besides, Snow White's voice was in the back of her head indignant at the thought that Tobey (her prince) would ever do anything to the women that they hadn't wanted, liked or needed. She quickly told her to be quiet. She needed to find the situation with Snow White humorous otherwise, she was going to go insane.

Morgan stared at her in shock. How could she be so blasé about it? "Did he, were you…" He couldn't finish the question.

"He tried. But no, I wasn't raped. Snow White stopped him." She was content, he realised. There was no horror at what she had been through, no shock, no trauma. Was she compartmentalizing again?

I'm pretty sure the next chapter is a Reid/Emily based one...I hope.

Who really knows, these characters just do want they want. I seriously never thought this fic was going to be this long, but oh well, what I am really going to do about it...stop writing? I think not.

;) Arc