A/N: Oooooh, it's getting intense! Reviews make me write faster ;)
Disclaimer: This story generally covers dark topics. Proceed at your own discretion. Also, I don't own any characters.
A flood of crimson trickled out of her mouth and onto her ghoulishly pale cheek when she coughed. Derek looked down into the blonde's panicked blue eyes, trying to blink away his own stinging tears. He had never seen Jennifer Jareau look as horrifically vulnerable as this. It was downright terrifying. Her face was not only marred with deep purple bruises, but it seemed impossibly sunken in, like someone had vacuumed all the life out of her cheeks. JJ's left arm was bent in an unnatural position, and terribly discolored. Of course, there was also the matter of the knife protruding from her stomach.
"Jayje," Morgan said frantically to the wheezing woman, "It's alright. We're here. You just hang on a little longer."
She began to hack again, spraying blood onto his face. After JJ had recovered, she finally met her friend's gaze. The only image he could think of to describe the haunted expression on her face was 'deer in the headlights."
"H-he stabbed them," JJ choked, a far away look in her eyes. "He stabbed them and I couldn't do anything."
Morgan shook his head and yelled again for a medic. He wanted to hold JJ's hand and comfort her like the friends they used to be, but he was afraid that any touch might completely shatter the woman. She just looked so broken, so fragile.
Aaron Hotchner led a team of paramedics toward the duo. He knelt down beside them, brow furrowed in intense concern.
"JJ," Hotch said, gentle but somehow still steady, "Reid and Emily are alive. We need to get you all to hospital, okay?"
He saw a glint of relief pass over her hollow face.
"They're okay?" She murmured, eyes slipping shut. "Good…"
There was a moment of shattering silence before her body went completely limp.
"Shit!" Morgan yelled, pressed a frantic hand to JJ's neck. Stillness. Horrible stillness. Hotch yelled directions at the paramedics.
They rushed towards her, shouting terrifying phrases about defibrillators and CPR. Morgan scooted away as far as he could, as if trying to escape the situation all together. The instant his back hit the cool concrete, Derek's head dropped into his hands, staining his face with JJ's blood.
"Mr. Reid? Mr. Reid! We need you to stay awake!"
His eyes fluttered open to reveal the headache-inducing white lights of an ambulance, along with two anxious paramedics hovering over him. There was someone else there too, someone he recognized; the effervescently wise face of David Rossi.
"It's doctor," he muttered, feeling a familiar rush of airiness course through his veins. Narcotics. They had definitely just given him more narcotics.
Only one thought echoed in his mind: I don't want to die high.
"Kid," Dave said firmly, "We've got you."
Reid nodded lazily.
Rossi had never seen anything quite like it. He hadn't thought it was possible for Reid to get skinnier, but he had, horribly so. He'd seen the sharp point of his elbow as they tried to force an IV into his shot veins, and almost gasped out loud. It was like a bony pocket knife.
His phone buzzed. It was Hotch.
I'm riding with Emily. Morgan's with JJ. It's bad.
Dave ran a shaking hand along his face. If Aaron Hotchner was admitting that it was bad, it was bad. He hadn't seen JJ in the cellar (he'd been too busy helping them cart Reid out), but he'd caught a glimpse of Emily before she was surrounded by officers. The front of her shirt was a deep red, and a disturbingly large pool of blood surrounded her lanky form. She looked eerily like Reid did; a bruised face and too-thin body. He couldn't imagine JJ was much better.
And of course, there was the matter of the sea of track marks that lay nestled in the crook of Spencer's elbow. The very thought sent burning waves of fear up Rossi's spine. He hadn't been in Georgia for the fateful Hankel case, but he'd sure as hell heard the stories. And he knew enough about it to look for the long-term effects of Tobias. He'd seen JJ jump every time a police dog came too close. He'd seen Reid's demeanor crack when a case involved addicts or religious killings.
Dave hadn't been to church since he was probably fourteen, when his mother finally gave up on the charade. But now, the usually unfazed man pressed his hands together and prayed. There didn't seem to be anything else to do.
She looked like a ghost. Aaron could not tear his dark eyes away from the dozens of infected cuts that covered her body. Each time the ambulance jerked around a corner, Prentiss' form slumped in a way that revealed some new bruise or wound. His only solace was the persistent beeping of the heart monitor.
Emily was unconscious and heavily sedated, all sorts of tubes and wires already hooked into her ashy skin. Hotch had never seen her face look so angular. All three of the agents looked so similar in that cellar; gaunt, wounded, and empty. They could be some sad version of siblings.
He had found them, yes, but was it enough? Would they live to see tomorrow? An even worse thought, even if they made it, would the horror of their experiences make them wish they'd perished in that bleak basement? Hell, Hotch didn't think he wanted to know the extent of the torture his three friends had been subjected to. Just the thought made him nauseous.
The vehicle jerked to a stop. A flurry of medical workers were waiting outside of the ambulance, and quickly whisked Emily away. Aaron knew, logically, that they were going to help her, but a tiny part of him felt like he had lost her all over again.
And there was still one painstaking task left to complete. He reluctantly pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
"Penelope?"
He heard a shaking sob from the other side of the phone. "Just tell me."
"They're alive."
That was the best that he could do. There was only bad news beyond those two words.
Waiting rooms, Penelope decided, were quite possibly the gloomiest places in the world. She'd been in plenty during her stint at the BAU; her beloved coworkers were always finding some new way to land themselves in the hospital. Garcia herself had once been the one in the operating room with a bullet in her chest, leaving the rest of the team to pace about the white linoleum tiles and hope for a miracle.
So no, she was not new to waiting rooms. But someone about this time was just different.
She could tell they were all feeling it. Though Penelope was not a profiler, she spent the majority of her days with six of them, and had developed a knack for reading people. She knew each of her team's anxious quirks like the back of her damn hand.
Hotch hadn't sat down in the two hours they'd been at the hospital. There were plenty of chairs available in the musty waiting area, but the Unit Chief chose to stand straight as a board, hands jammed into his pockets, eyes never leaving a certain spot on the wall.
From the waist up, Rossi was incredibly put-together (if you didn't count the fact that lips were pressed together so hard they may as well be stuck with Krazy Glue). His left knee, however, gave him away. It was bouncing uncontrollably, like a dog trying to shake off its leash. Garcia knew that this was his way of expelling every ounce of nervous energy so that he could keep his brain clear.
And then there was Derek. Her Derek. He witlessly switched between sitting and standing, sometimes pacing fervorously around the perimeter of the room, and sometimes completely still in his chair. The brooding man mumbled incessantly to himself about why they hadn't yet been given an update. Of all the incredible virtues Morgan possessed, he had never seemed to quite master the whole 'patience' thing.
Will and Henry were already on a flight to Ohio. Diana Reid's santiatirum was going to update her whenever they got news. Ambassador Prentiss was awaiting word in London.
As for herself? Hell, she was the easiest to read out of all of them. Penelope had tried, at first, to fend off the tears, but as the minutes ticked on, they had become inescapable. She was sure there was mascara all over her cheeks now.
Thirteen fucking days, and she still may lose all three of them.
It still didn't quite seem real.
Garcia tried to convince every reluctant brain cell that everything was going to be fine, but a nagging voice reminded her of the videos. Those damned torture tapes.
Even if they pulled through, no one would ever be able to erase those thirteen days.
And quite honestly? She didn't think anything, anyone, would ever be the same again.
The metal door swung open, revealing a flustered doctor looking down at a tablet.
"Families of agents Jareau, Prentiss, and Reid?"
He said JJ's last name wrong, (Jay-row instead of Juh-row), and Penelope had to bite back the correction sitting on the edge of her tongue. It didn't seem quite like the time. All four remaining BAU members stood, each looking intensely terrified in their own special way.
Garcia swallowed the tears for a moment. "That's us."