AN: Exceptionally short chapter, but important! I will try and get another up today. I have it mostly written but had to separate the two as this one really shows where JJ is at. I dropped a very small hint in here about another battle she may have to face. Let me know if you "see" it.
JJ coughed; and this time she did not have the energy to turn her head; she didn't have the energy to expel what she was coughing up. It simply trickled down her cheek and JJ felt it roll onto her shoulder.
She was dying; her mind had come out of a dense fog briefly, and JJ knew it. She knew that she had minutes left to live.
And she didn't fear it; she was not scared or worried. It was the opposite. It was peace and hope and longing. She longed for this to be over because she knew nobody was coming, that her time was up. And her hope was on death row; that it would come and gently take her away from this hell hole.
She knew Will and Henry would miss her, that the team would be devastated and would be out for vengeance. But she also knew she would be nothing but a burden on them, that if somehow she survived, she would be the sole focus of them. That other victims would die if she survived. That the team would be so focused on finding the people who did this to her; that no other cases would be looked at.
And she couldn't do that; if she had a chance to save one more life, she would. Even at the cost of her own life; she could have the one more thing she longed for. To be that powerful force field of a federal agent. They hadn't taken it from her; she was still going to save lives.
She coughed again and this time found it even harder to take in a breath; it felt as if something was sitting on top of her, crushing her chest. But then another thought occurred to her; for the first time, she wasn't feeling pain. She was struggling to breathe, but it wasn't painful. Just hard.
And she despised Leaff; despised him for a number of reasons. For everything; for forcing her to live. But she hated him for leaving the lights off; she had woken up during a coughing fit to discover the lights off. She had no way of turning them on and she had long since learned that nothing good happened in the dark.
For the first time in months, she wasn't in pain and JJ felt her body slowly relax into the couch, felt her muscles relax and her stomach stop hurting. She felt her heart rate slowing down and felt the thoughts start slowing down.
Death was here and she was ready for it. Death was coming for her, walking towards her and JJ smiled; she closed her eyes for the last time just as the SWAT team made entry.