A/N: I know, I know, it's been too long since I've updated. Life has been super stressful! I hope this chapter makes up for it, and don't worry, we'll get an update on everyone's favorite boy genius in the next one. Reviews make me smile!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Criminal Minds. Also, as per usual, this is angsty. Be warned.
In the foggy haze of her mind, Emily Prentiss could not escape him. Every listless thought, every wandering idea… it all came back to Tom. His yellow teeth catching the dull basement light. His hands dragging her up the stairs, into the void. His body, unwelcome, on hers. His knife burying itself in the depths of her abdomen.
He was everywhere.
A blanket of painkillers clouded her usually sharp mind. She kept her eyes screwed shut, in case it had been a dream, and she really was still down in the cellar. But she could hear it all; the muddled beeping, the faint din of chatter from voices both familiar and unknown.
And when she did open her eyes, the world was gloriously white. Far too pristine to be the gritty chamber of her former two weeks. She released a thankful hiss of air and blinked a few times until her vision focused. Four figures hovered around the perimeter of her clunky hospital bed.
"Em?" Garcia whispered, her voice catching. Prentiss' eyes flicked vigilantly towards her crying friend. God, she wanted to smile, to comfort the obviously distraught technical analyst, but the best she could muster was a guarded nod. Emily hugged her arms closely around the thin fabric of her hospital gown, feeling utterly exposed. It was then that she noticed the thick white bandages that wrapped her stomach, the bright blue cast on her left ankle, and the IV poking out of the crook of her elbow.
He really stabbed me, she thought, heart picking up. Oh God. The others.
It was as if someone had stolen the very breath from her lungs. This labored panting only exacerbated the various cuts and bruises that littered her thin frame. Emily tried to get the words out, she really did, but she was no match for the panic nestled deep in her gut.
All four of her coworkers' eyes grew wide; Emily Prentiss was not one to show weakness, not even under the darkest of circumstances. Not even when faced with monsters like Ian Doyle. How bad must her thirteen days have been to elicit this unadulterated fear?
Aaron could guess, based on the sea of injuries that were visible on her shaking body, pretty damn bad. Not to mention the wounds that they couldn't see. The ones that lived in her memory.
Derek couldn't stand just staring at his panicked friend any longer, especially with the nagging thought of how easily it could have been him, lying traumatized and beaten down in a hospital bed. He reached out a hand and placed it on her shoulder. She flinched away, involuntarily letting out a sharp whimper. Morgan pulled his arm off of her and mumbled guilty apologies, silently cursing himself for being so thoughtless.
Emily eventually got her breathing under control, much to the relief of her concerned teammates. Rossi and Hotch hung back at the foot of her bed after seeing her frightened reception of Derek, letting only Garcia remain close to Emily. Penelope whispered comforting words from a safe distance (she could still see the wariness in her friend's dark eyes) until Emily seemed stable again.
"Reid and JJ are alright," Hotch said gently. "They both just got out of surgery. The doctors say they'll be waking up soon."
Emily nodded, feeling the tiniest bit of tension fade from her shoulders. Still, a question lingered on her tongue. A sour, nauseating question.
"Tom?" She rasped meekly, staring down at her lap.
Dave shoved his hands into his blazer pockets and exhaled. "His real name was Jamie Baker. He was reenacting the abuse of his father, Adrian-Thomas. He's dead, Emily."
She felt a lone tear escape her hollow brown eyes.
"Good."
The foursome of healthy BAU agents dawdled silently outside of JJ and Reid's adjacent ICU rooms, where both agents lay in an anesthetized slumber. Soon after Emily had awoken, doctors had whisked her away to run more tests, leaving her teammates to sit in a restless wait.
"Did you see the look in her eyes?" Rossi sighed, leaning back against the wall.
Garcia nodded grimly. "That wasn't Emily in there. I mean, not really. She looked so… hollow. Like a shell of her old self."
They wallowed in this terrible truth for a moment.
"She thought I was going to hit her," Morgan spat bitterly, as if the very words had damned him. "She really thought I was going to hit her."
Rossi put an awkward hand on Derek's shoulder. "They've all suffered unimaginable trauma, both physical and psychological. You can't take it personally."
Morgan looked unconvinced. He shot a pleading look at his unit chief. "Hotch. She was scared of me."
"She seemed wary of all of us, Morgan. Especially the men," Aaron replied quietly. It wasn't that he didn't want to comfort his team. He simply couldn't. It would be lying, and Aaron Hotchner didn't lie unless absolutely necessary. The gravity of his words seemed to register on all of their faces at once.
Garcia visibly paled. "Hotch. You don't think…"
But they had all seen the ME's reports of previous victims, and they knew what may have happened to JJ and Emily.
Hotch shook his head darkly. "Their doctors have been instructed to run a sexual assault exam."
As if on cue, there was a muddled rustling from one of the ICU rooms. Just as quickly as the four agents rushed towards Jennifer Jareau, she was screaming. Screaming in a way that was so heart-wrenching, so air-piercing, that it seemed to stop the world for a moment.
"No!" She cried, tugging at the oxygen cannula snaked under her nose with the arm that wasn't suspended in a sling. "No! I don't want to! Stop!"
Her shrieks just about shattered her teammates. They stood frozen in shock at the edge of her bed as she thrashed and kicked. Nurses rushed in around them and tried to hold JJ back. Garcia swallowed her melancholy fear and pushed past them, crouching next to her friend.
"Jayje. It's me, Penelope. You're safe now. He can't get you."
JJ's eyes darted towards her, and slowly, painstakingly, she quieted down. Once she wasn't yelling anymore, though, she was weeping, in that awful sort of silent way. Tracks of tears glistened on her pale cheeks, and the dull white light of the hospital made the blonde look even more ashy and unwell than she already was. Much like Emily, cuts and bruises spattered her visible skin, and the agents could only imagine that the rest of her body looked similarly. She was covered in bandages; one particularly large one was taped above her eyebrow, and certain segments of her spindly arms were wrapped in gauze. JJ had been a thin woman before the ordeal, but now she looked utterly gaunt, so frail that it was as if any bump could break her.
A lump of nausea formed in the back of Aaron Hotchner's throat. What has this sinister man been feeding them (or, more appropriately, not feeding them) that they could get this horribly malnourished in only two weeks? Not a lot, he decided. And Aaron had read about the psychological effects of prolonged starvation.
Through her quiet sniffles, JJ mumbled something. All four agents snapped their heads towards her.
"What is it, JJ?" Rossi asked gently, as if talking to a small child.
She didn't make eye contact with him, instead staring at her dry and cracked hands. JJ inhaled shakily and tried again. "Where are they?"
"They're both fine, JJ," Hotch said. "Emily's room is to your right, and Reid's is to your left."
She still did not look up, and only spoke in a whisper. "Can I see them?"
"Soon Jayje," Morgan said, making sure to keep far away from the blonde. "Really soon. Em's getting some tests run, and Reid's not quite awake yet."
Her blue eyes widened at this, and she began to breathe a little harder. On the inside, Jennifer Jareau was working hard to keep it together. She knew Tom was dead; she'd seen Morgan take the headshot. And still, it felt like he was here, lurking in the shadows, waiting for her. She could still feel his hands on her, and just the thought made JJ want to scrub her skin until it was raw. And God, the letters…
His name, carved into her stomach. A scarred emblem of all the pain and suffering that had occured in that cellar.
She finally worked up the courage to look her teammates in the eyes, and asked the horrible question that was swirling in her head.
"Did he… did he send you videos?"
Hotch's stomach lurched. "For the first couple of days, yes."
"Oh," JJ whispered. The thought of her team seeing any part of what had happened in that basement was gut wrenching, but still, she was glad that not everything had been videotaped. If that had been the case, she wasn't sure that any of them, neither the ones who experienced it nor the ones who watched it, would ever recover.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," she said softly, averting her eyes towards her lap once again. The four other agents in that room each felt unique pangs of guilt, rage, and utter sadness. Because this woman who'd been through hell was apologizing to them. And that was so backwards, so fucked up, that they all silently decided it was the most sorrowful thing they'd ever heard.