The call went to voicemail after ringing out.
"Hey, Aaron," Jane started her message as she entered her apartment, knowing that her Unit Chief was still at the office. "My offer still stands. That apartment of yours is barely lived in, and God knows you kip out on my couch half the time these days. Just … stop by, if you want. I don't think any of us want to spend the night in an empty apartment, not after that damn farm."
She sighed as she ended the call, scrubbing a hand across her face. Her satchel ended up on her couch, followed by her jacket and overshirt - and she was just beginning to remove her boots when -
"Don't move."
"Where's Hotch?" Emily asked suddenly, standing over the cooled body of a hispanic man. "And Jane, for that matter."
"He's not answering his cell, neither of them are," JJ commented offhandedly. "I assume they're on vibrate. They'll get my messages as soon as they wake up."
"What's the money they're together?" Morgan muttered lowly to Emily, shooting an eyebrow waggle and grin at the team. "That would distract 'em."
"Nope," Rossi dismissed. "Not thinking about that."
Emily smothered her laughs, mindful of the crime scene around them.
"Try them again," Rossi ordered, sobering. "They can meet us at Barton's house."
"This guy's a trauma surgeon working a major metropolitan area," Penelope pointed out to her Boy Wonder over the call, pulling up files left and right. "We are talking thousands of surgeries."
"Confine it to the last six months."
"That's still hundreds," She groused. Finding one dead stressor out of hundreds …
"I know," Reid pushed forward.
"Ok, do you want biographical information or full medical charts?" She offered him. "I can get you and Janey copies lickity-split!"
"Have you heard from Jane?" Reid asked, clearly surprised for some reason. "Or Hotch?"
"... They're not with you?" She felt her stomach drop, thinking back to the last time she'd seen either of them. They had both looked too worn around the edges for her liking.
"They're probably on their way," Her baby genius tried to brush it off, dismiss her worry - but even as Reid ended the call she had a bad feeling about it.
"Jeffery is leaving school in five hours. There's no way we can get through all these patients in this time."
Emily exchanged glances with Reid, silently trying to figure out what to say to Dr. Barton.
"Well, we've narrowed it down already -" Emily tries to point out their progress.
"And we still have a hundred left!" Dr. Barton exclaimed. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be callus, but when you work in the ER you don't remember names: you operate and you move on."
'We need Jane.'
Doctors were her category, not theirs - no matter how many books Reid read.
"He's right. There are too many files here for us to profile in such a short period of time," Emily sighs, standing and gathering herself. "I can get to Hotch's and back here in half an hour. Chances are Jane crashed at his place anyway."
Reid's face twitched subtly at the hidden lie. Both of them knew that Hotch would know where Jane was, yes, but the two of them were both too secretive for the team to know for sure whose place they crashed at (and it took months of questionably-moral intra-team profiling to figure out that they crashed together at all). But telling the father of a threatened child how many stops she would be making would only work against them.
"Who's that? Who are they?" Dr. Barton asked, confused and worried.
"Our supervisor and our medical examiner," Reid explained briefly. "We weren't supposed to work today, and we're having trouble getting ahold of them."
"We need more eyes," Emily justified, adjusting a cufflink before walking out the door.
And if she walked a little faster, worry fueling her stride … well, no one was there to see it.
Emily pulled up to Hotch's apartment building first - her priority, she decided.
As much help as Jane would be with the charts, Hotch was still the profiler and still their supervisor. They needed speed and a new pair of eyes, and Hotch would be it.
(And if there was that little nosy part of her, the part that wondered if she would find Jane curled up on Hotch's couch or asleep … somewhere else - well, Emily couldn't be blamed for being human.)
"Hotch?" She called as she knocked at his door. "It's me, Emily."
No answer.
She rang his phone, and she could hear it inside the apartment.
And the door was unlocked.
Her stomach dropped.
Emily pulled her gun, pushing open the door in one practiced motion - immediately cataloging what she saw as she swept the flat.
Hotch's keys on the side table, his briefcase on the couch. A bullet hole through the wall, clean through. Two blood stains on the ground, one larger, the other smaller - four feet apart. A broken glass, a discarded cell phone, and Hotch's sidearm in its holster on the table.
And no one else there.
"Hey," Reid answered his phone, not expecting Emily to call.
"Reid, something happened to Hotch."
"What?" He can't compute that. "What - what are you talking about?"
But Dr. Barton is talking and Reid's mind is racing a thousand miles an hour to comfort a concerned parent while still finding out what the hell was going on from Emily - her explanation coming through rapidfire, like a flood.
Barton stormed out, Emily was still talking.
"There's a huge hole in the wall, probably a .44, but there's no blood or tissue spray around it," Emily was saying, finishing her rushed summary.
"Any idea how he got out?" He asks, mind racing.
"If he was shot, there are no drag marks - but a body could have been wrapped in something."
"Wait -" Reid ran back through everything Emily had said, recalling what he heard even as Dr. Barton was talking to him. "You said two blood stains."
"Yes, one larger, one smaller."
"Emily," Reid forced his voice out through his tightening throat. "Where's Jane?"
"Talk to me, Garcia," Emily answered on the first ring.
"Ok, I -" Penelope swallowed, tried to keep her heartbeat steady. "I called hospitals to see if Hotch had gotten himself admitted to an emergency room."
"And?"
"He's not listed as a patient, but someone dropped a John Doe off at a St. Sebastian Hospital," She dry swallowed again. "And that person's name was FBI Agent Derek Morgan."
"It doesn't make sense," Emily verbalized her thoughts exactly.
"I know, do you think they got their credentials mixed up?" Garcia asked, even as she knew that the both of them - and especially Hotch - were both far too vigilant to let that happen.
There was silence on the other end of the line - silence that was exactly the kind of non-noise that occured when one of her babies made the kind of epiphany that they really wished they hadn't made.
"The Reaper," Emily found her voice. "Foyet took Morgan's creds."
"Why would he drop him off at the ER?" Garcia asked with poorly disguised confusion.
"Better question," Emily corrected in her Grim Voice. "Where, exactly, is Jane?"
"He was stabbed nine times, but no major arteries were hit," The doctor was saying. "It's a miracle he's alive."
Emily felt out of her depth. Hotch was unconscious and covered in bandages and machines were familiar but indecipherable. This was Jane's department.
Jane - whose satchel, with her phone, was in her apartment but who was nowhere to be found. Jane, who she had no leads on finding, not even knowing if she even was in danger until Hotch confirmed that that second blood stain was hers. Jane who - Jane who should've been right here, going over Hotch's chart and scowling at the lack of information.
"When will he wake up?" Emily asked, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice.
"The anesthesia should wear off within the hour," The doctor supplied. "But he's bound to be out of it."
The doctor left, and Emily's phone rang.
"Prentiss," She answered tiredly.
"How is he?" Garcia's voice came through.
"Stable, but still out of it," Emily answered, keeping her worry out of her tone. "Any luck finding Jane?"
"No, not yet," Garcia sounded distressed enough for both of them. "Her apartment has nothing on the cams, and without her cell we can't track her. No Jane Harts or … or Jane Does have been checked into any hospitals for a hundred mile radius, and if she's not at her apartment or Hotch's …"
"We'll find her, Garcia," Emily assured her the best she could. "We'll find her."
Gunshot.
"Reid?" Emily felt her heart plummet at the retort and the lack of reply. "Answer me. Reid?"
She calls dispatch and gets an ambulance and police sent to the Barton house, but she does it on autopilot. All she can think about is the line going dead and Hotch in that bed and Jane nowhere to be found and now Reid could be - could be dead.
Why did all the people she cared about have to get hurt?
And there was nothing she could do but wait and hope, and it was killing her.
Reid winced as he continued to put pressure on his wound, cursing for the millionth time that Jane was MIA. As capable as Dr. Barton was, he prefered Jane over a stranger, any day.
But Jane was missing, and all they could hope was that the Reaper hadn't gotten to her.
"You okay?" JJ asked, coming up on him with Morgan and Rossi close behind. "Is Jane here?"
"I'm fine," He tried to brush it off, knowing a gunshot wound to his leg was nothing compared to Foyet's knife. "Jane's not here."
"We'll get you to a hospital," Morgan nods, accepting the absence of Jane - not knowing just how bad that really was.
"You need to find Emily," Reid told them, the Barton case done now. "Call Emily."
"Where is she?" Rossi asked, beginning to pick up on the severity of the situation.
"Jane's missing," Reid gasps out through the pain. "And something's happened to Hotch."
Aaron woke up in pain, with a fog over his head like his head had been stuffed with pillow fluff.
Wait.
There was something missing.
He forced his eyes open, vision blurry. Emily. Dave. Derek. Safe.
But where am I?
"In the hospital," Dave answered for him. Must've spoken out loud.
"How did I get here?"
His throat hurt.
Something was missing. Something was wrong.
"Foyet drove you."
Morgan.
Something was wrong.
"Can you remember what happened?"
Emily.
'You should've made a deal.'
"What'd he take?"
Something was missing.
"What do you mean?" Dave asked.
Something was missing. Something was missing.
"He always takes something from his victims."
The word feels heavy in his mouth. Heavier.
Something's missing something's missing something's missing -
"Do we know what he took?"
"There was a page missing from your day planner," Emily answered. "In the address section, the Bs."
Bad but not it Bad but not it.
"What did he leave?"
"I don't know," Emily answered.
"He also leaves something with his victims."
The word is less heavy now. He's profiling, he's a profiler.
And he needs to be because something is missing.
"Where are my clothes?"
They pass him his affects, pushing aside his blood stained shirt so he could get to the envelope of things inside. His fingers feel like they're moving through mud but he needs to find what's missing.
There's a picture of Haley and Jack, with bloodied fingerprints on the surface -
And a single slash runs through the right side of Haley's face, right down her cheek.
- something's missing something's missing SOMETHING'S MISSING -
"Haley's maiden name was Brooks," Hotch explains with half a mind, eyes locked on the cut. "I always listed her in the Bs …"
He trails off, but Rossi picks up where he left off.
"He knows where they live."
But something was still missing.
This is why he hated being on drugs.
The cut on Haley's face.
Taking a page out of a day planner, even with his family on it, wouldn't be enough would it?
Then it clicks, the cut -
Jane -!
"You should have made a deal."
Foyet shot the wall.
"Is this part of my profile - you can't show me fear?"
"If you don't see fear, maybe it's because I'm not afraid of you."
Gun still aimed at his head.
"You say that as if you actually meant it. How's my friend Agent Morgan?"
He was messing with him.
"Are you here to kill me, or are you here to play games?"
A shift.
"You tell me," Foyet removed his mask, grinning. "Or … you can tell her."
Gun still trained on him, stepping back into the next room. Hotch's stomach dropping, dread building as Foyet reached down to pull up a limp figure.
Jane.
"She's no fun asleep," Foyet switched his aim to her temple. "But I had to get her here quietly. Luckily she carries all kinds of drugs in that bag of hers."
He drops her, limp, on the ground. She sprawls across the floor, boneless. Dead to the world - but still breathing. Still breathing. Aim shifts back to him.
"So tell us. Enlighten your audience about my behavior."
They fought, Foyet had no one to defend but Hotch did. Foyet got the upper hand.
Hotch got a knife to the gut.
Taunts, and stabs, and taunts, and stabs. Over and over and over -
But then he stopped.
"Your Dr. Jane is a pretty little thing," Foyet stepped over to her, tracing his knife along the front of her shirt. "But she's so scarred up. Ugly, scars are - I should know."
A sick laugh.
Hotch noticed for the first time the slashes running down the side of Jane's trousers, exposing her legs. Legs covered in as many scars as her arms.
"The little prude's always so covered up, I had to see for myself," Foyet mocks. "And I think I know why. See this?"
He reached down with a bloodied hand, lifting up Jane's camisole and exposing a red scar underneath, running across her stomach.
"Do you know how much you have to study the human body to stab yourself repeatedly and not die?"
Foyet traced the scar with his knife, leaving a trail of Hotch's blood across Jane's skin.
"I don't want to brag, but I'm somewhat of an expert," Foyet bared his teeth. "Which means that I know that little Janey had her uterus cut out, but only after it was butchered first - so sloppy."
Hotch felt rage - for Jane and at Foyet and at Them and at everyone - and it was almost enough to dull out the pain of him bleeding out.
"It's too bad. I mean, what good is she to you if you can't have her pop out lots of emotionless, stone faced babies for you?" Foyet leered. "Seems to me the only thing pretty left about her is her pretty face."
He raised his knife.
"Let's see how long that lasts."
"They're safe," Emily tells him once she gets off the phone.
A weight off his shoulders. Haley and Jack were safe, and now he just needed to make sure Jane was too.
"You were at my place, right?" Hotch asked raspily. "But Jane wasn't?"
"So Jane was there," Emily swallowed. "The second bloodstain was hers."
"Foyet -" Hotch struggled to remember. "He … right as I was passing out, he told me that he was going to leave Jane there. For you to find. But she wasn't?"
"Maybe Foyet lied," Emily offered. "Or Jane got help for herself."
"But you said Garcia couldn't find anyone at nearby hospitals."
"She's a doctor, she could've treated herself."
"But she would've called us," Hotch threw his head back into his pillow. "What if Foyet has her? He disappeared before, and with her drugged and injured he could've controlled her easily."
"Foyet wants you both to suffer, and he likes to watch," Emily reasoned. "You with your family, and Jane with … with not being able to help you. Help us. Chances are she's at least aware, because Foyet doesn't like torturing the unconscious - we know that with Morgan - and if she's aware she's smart enough to escape, or leave us a sign."
"She can be as smart as she likes," Hotch ground his jaw. "But if Foyet puts a knife in her it won't matter."
"I just talked to Spence, he's gonna be fine," JJ reported. "He's gonna have to be on crutches for a while, but he said kicking down doors is Morgan's job, anyway."
Her attempt at humor fell flat in the tense atmosphere. Morgan only tensed further at the joke.
"You know, Foyet having your credentials had nothing to do with any of this," Emily tried to reassure him. "It was just his way of trying to torture you."
"Yeah, I know," Morgan gritted out. "Foyet's about power and control. He was hoping to watch me fall apart, and now he wants to destroy Hotch - and God knows what he's doing to Jane."
Emily was just about to answer when JJ's phone went off, and the both of them watching as the Media Liaison answered it with a frown.
"This is Agent Jareau," JJ answered, before her face did a somersault and she quickly put it on speaker.
"- admitted with a facial injury, bicep laceration, and signs of being drugged," The professional voice on the other end of the line was saying. "Luckily someone dropped her off, and she had this number written in sharpie on her inner arm."
"What condition was she in when she got dropped off? And who dropped her off?" JJ questioned the woman. "What was she wearing when she arrived? Her arm was exposed?"
"She was still pretty out of it due to the drugs," The doctor - nurse? - replied to her flood of questions. "She walked in, confused, and no one saw who brought her here. She was wearing a white dress, a sundress, and was barefoot. Her arms and legs and her … her scars were exposed, and your number was written on the inside of her forearm."
Emily swallowed roughly, not even knowing where to start profiling something like that.
"We'll be right there."
Dave led the way into the hospital - a clinic, really, not even large enough to have security cams on the entrance, unfortunately - with his non-hospitalized teammates close behind him.
"We're here for-" He cut himself off, gathered himself through the irony. "We're here for your Jane Doe."
"Right this way," The nurse they stopped lead them through the clinic's single hall. "We're flushing out her system right now - and she's awake - but she's still not fully lucid. And whatever happened before she came here: it affected her, badly."
The nurse pushed aside a curtain, clearing way to a bed with their teammate and friend laying on it.
Jane looked like hell. She was curled in on herself, laying on her side in something close to the fetal position. Her arms were feebly wrapped around herself, and someone had thrown a blanket over her - adjusting it to expose her face and the IV running into her hand. She looked miserable and tired and as if she had all of her energy wrung out of her.
But she was there and she was alive.
"Hey, Jane," Dave approached her slowly, carefully - the rest of the team hanging back to give her some space. "How're you doing?"
"Where's Aaron?" She asks instead of answering, face still buried - three straight cuts ran down her cheek from just under the bags of her eyes to her chin. Distinct but shallow, and perfectly parallel to each other.
"Aaron's at a different hospital, one we're gonna transfer you to in a bit." Dave told her gently, trying to coax her out. "But he's okay, and he's getting really good treatment. The doctors say that you have another injury, other than your face. What is it?"
Jane shrugged her upper shoulder weakly, and Dave reached over to gently pull back the blanket.
A line of stitches ran across her shoulder, amateurly done and clearly hours old. The thread was thick, wiry stuff and the ties were messy. The cut was placed where Jane couldn't have stitched it up herself - and even if she could've she definitely would've done a better job than this, even drugged.
"With the drugs still in her system, and no positive ID, we decided to leave them in," The nurse explained quietly. "They're ugly but effective."
"Someone stitched you up, Jane," Morgan stepped to the other side of the bed. "Do you know who?"
Jane shook her head, curling tighter.
"Can you tell us what happened?" Dave asked instead.
She took a deep breath.
"Came home," She said. "Foyet was there. Came at me with a knife, cut me - arm."
"And then?" JJ prompted gently.
"He hit me," Jane began to shiver. "Got my bag - jabbed me with needle."
"Propofol," The nurse contributed.
"Woke up Aaron's place," Jane continued, not seeming to have heard the nurse. "Face hurt. Made it to door, went into hall. Dark out."
"You're doing great," Morgan assured her, then continued, pressing gently. "And how did you make it here? You showed up in a dress, without your boots. Do you know where you got it?"
Jane was silent for a long time. Dave was just about to repeat the question when she spoke softly, still shivering.
"Felt someone behind me," She curled up even tighter. "Thought could get help - find Aaron, call you. But I turned, a rag shoved in my face. Got dizzy. Another needle, then I was here. And it was light."
She went silent after that. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, and it was clear the conversation was over.
The nurse ushered them away from their doctor, shutting the curtain with a sharp flick of her wrist.
"She's gonna be out of it for a while longer," The nurse explained briskly, no nonsense. "But with Propofol, the chance of her having any reliable memory of the events goes down significantly. Has she had poor memory recall when on medication before?"
"Yes, she has," Morgan confirmed, exchanging glances with the rest of them. "After New York, she didn't remember anything from when she was drugged up."
"Then I can't say that it is likely she will remember tonight's events," The nurse sighed. "Which is bad for you, as she can't help find whoever did … this to her - but I would say good for her."
"What do you mean?" Dave asked, forehead creasing.
"She's a young woman with more scar tissue than I see on most burn victims," The nurse stated bluntly. "And between that and her apparently being FBI, that means she's stubborn as hell. Whatever happened between her waking up in that apartment and her walking in here was enough for her to devolve into that." She nodded at the closed curtain behind her. "Do you really want her remembering it?"
Dave couldn't form an answer.
Jane woke up alone.
And in a hospital.
And her face hurt.
Thankfully, she wasn't in a hospital gown. Someone had put her in sweats and a tank top, with a sweater carefully folded on her side table. All black.
So her team knew she was here.
What happened?
Foyet. Foyet was in her apartment, then he attacked her -
And nothing.
Shit.
She grabbed her chart from the foot of her bed, mindful of the twinge in her shoulder. She reached over and ran her fingers over smooth, even stitching as she read.
Oh, well. Could've been far worse.
She flipped the clipboard over, using its metallic sheen to check her face.
Three ugly - but relatively shallow - lines running down her right cheek. Foyet's work, no doubt.
That's what they made concealer for, right?
Or maybe foundation. That would probably be more effective.
No one was around her, and she never was one for staying put - especially if a cut or two was the biggest of her problems - so she carefully turned off the machines and removed the various lines and wires from her person. Quietly, she pulled on the sweater - size indicating it was probably Morgan's - and a pair of boots that looked like her backup pair from her apartment.
She waited for a lull in movement in the hallway, the clock indicating that it was 4:32. AM.
Damn, it was early.
A nurse's station was left open, and she quickly filed her AMA form and discharged herself. Next, she checked the database.
Hotch and Reid? Shit, what the hell happened?
Not wanting to risk getting caught, she left the station - grabbing a pen to write the room numbers down on her hand.
She also needed to get her gloves. Dammit.
She hit up Reid's first, it was closest.
Spinner was asleep - luckily asleep, not unconscious - and his chart stated a gunshot wound to the leg. If he kept off of it - which was unlikely - his prognosis was good. Jane might lend him her cane, just to spread around all the teasing she had to endure when she needed one before. She still had it, right? Maybe.
She poked around his room, finding his things - his messenger bag, specifically. Going through the contents yielded nothing helpful but a pencil (which she promptly used as a pin to put her hair up) and a case file on a threat against a father and son. Irrelevant to her, now that the team had resolved the issue. Nothing on Foyet.
With one last glance over her fellow doctor, she put the room back as it was and slipped back out the door.
Hotch's room was guarded, which was both relieving and irritating. But Jane just backtracked, slipping into a locker room she had passed on her way over. Going through a couple of lockers, she found some scrubs that would fit her and a white coat with Dr. Kyle embroidered on the breast. A quick moment at the mirror to find a face mask and she was back on her way.
She made a big show of doing rounds, stopping at each room on the floor 'just to check in.' Most were asleep, and she made a show of checking over the charts of everyone who wasn't.
(Room 412 needed a PET scan. She made a note.)
Then she reached Hotch's.
"Excuse me, doctor," One of the guards - hospital security, it looked like - stopped her. "You can't go in there."
"I need to check on this patient," She tossed back. "He's in need of constant supervision, his condition could change at a moment's notice."
They stared each other down, the two of them, until the other guard interrupted them.
"What's with the mask?"
"I have a sick daughter at home," She explained dryly. "Just a cold, and my husband is taking care of her, but as a precaution I need to wear it when dealing with my more at-risk patients. It's just procedure."
They stared a bit more. The guards exchanged glances.
"Go ahead," The first guard allowed. "He's a federal agent. He deserves the best care."
"And I'll be sure to give it to him."
"Did you seriously just bluff your way past hospital security by wearing a face mask?" A surprisingly aware Hotch asked her the moment the door was shut behind her. "Because if you were a con artist in another life, I feel like I deserve to know."
"Who knows what I was," Jane scoffed, picking up his chart. "You want to tell me what happened?"
And he did.
(She kinda wished he hadn't.)
"What do you remember?" He asked as she carefully put his chart back, a having read it start to finish. "From that night."
"Foyet was in my apartment," Jane thought back. "He taunted me - about you - and then attacked me. Got to my bag and drugged me. And then I woke up here."
"That's all?" Aaron looked worried. "Jane, that was three days ago."
Jane blinked, confused.
"What?"
That … it couldn't have been, could it?
"They had to keep you sedated," He explained, struggling to push himself up - she rushed forward to help him. "You were - you were in shock. Unresponsive."
"I don't remember anything," She murmured, adjusting his pillows with practiced ease. "I - I don't know what happened. How I got to that clinic."
"It's okay," He smiled, trying to ease her worry. "It's fine."
"I can't stay long, I'm pretending to be on my rounds," She apologized, glancing back at the door. "I'll see you soon."
And she got up, and pretended for the guards that she wanted to get out as quickly as possible and home to a sick daughter - rather than stay and refuse to leave his side.
Her apartment had crime scene tape on the door.
Three days apparently wasn't very long at all.
She ducked under it anyway, thankful that the door hadn't been sealed, at least, and quickly grabbed her go bag and her satchel - snagging extra money on her way out.
Where to?
She ran through her options in her head. Hotch's was out. JJ, Penny, and Dave would force her to go back to the hospital. Morgan and Emily would guilt her into telling the aforementioned, and the result would be the same. That left -
Oh. Reid was in the hospital. She could crash at his place.
A quick trip over on the metro, and she arrived at Reid's just as the sun finally came up over the skyline.
She came up on his door and dipped into her satchel, pulling out her lock picks as she glanced around the empty hallway. No one was there, so she dropped to her knee and picked the lock.
'Take that, Turner.' She thought. 'Living on the street is good for you.'
She pushed the door open, locking it behind her, and flipped propriety the bird as she collapsed on Reid's couch, not even bothering to kick off her boots.
"Hotch, Jane's gone!"
Aaron blinked, coming out of his stupor - thinking about Jack and Haley - as a worried Reid rolled his way into his hospital room in his wheelchair.
He could only blink at the baldfaced worry on the young genius' face, thinking back to the early morning visit he had received.
"Jane -" He groaned, cursing the bandages on his arms preventing him from rubbing his temples in irritation. "What the hell?"
Morgan came up on Reid's apartment, pulling out the spare key that Pretty Boy had passed his way. He glanced at Emily, shrugged, and let himself right in.
They both stopped in the doorway.
"Hotch was right," Morgan finally found his voice. "She did crash here."
"Well, at least she isn't kidnapped again," Emily stated in almost-deadpan, trying and failing to keep the humor out of her voice.
Jane had collapsed on Reid's couch, just like Hotch had guessed. At some point she had freed her arms from Morgan's loaned sweater, and with her knees tucked up under the fabric and her head curled and hair a mess she… well, she looked more like a woolen tomato with a curly brown stalk than their intimidating, stoic doctor.
"Lets …" Morgan just sighed, out of his depth. "Just, grab her stuff. I'll get her."
And he scooped her up like a beach ball, following Prentiss out of the apartment.
Jane woke up to the movement of a car, tucked up under someone's arm.
She inhaled, smelled woodsmoke and musk, and a hint of sweat. Her ear was against a firm chest, the thumping of it familiar - if only usually felt through her fingers.
She counted. Measured.
Morgan. It was Morgan.
"Hey," He squeezed her gently, "You up?"
"Yeah," She slurred, allowing herself the indulgence of burrowing deeper into his warmth. "Where're we going?"
"To Rossi's," Morgan assured her. "Don't worry, we both know that us sending you back to the hospital would be useless, you damn hypocrite. Rossi's gonna put you up till you can get your apartment back."
"Who's driving?" She asked, not wanting to open her eyes.
"Emily is," Prentiss called from in front of them. "We both went to get you from Reid's - how did you even get it?"
"Lock picks."
LeFay's rumbling laugh bounced around his chest, and the comfort of it - the safety - sent Jane back under.
