A/N: Here is the last chapter of this story. I want to thank you all for sticking around in my hiatus. All of the favorites, follows, and reviews mean a lot and I cannot wait to write more. Happy reading!
gravity noun, often attributive
technical: the natural force that tends to cause physical things to move towards each other: the force that causes things to fall towards the Earth
-Merriam-Webster Dictionary
VIII.
December, at last
They almost lose Emily on a Monday. It happens quickly, as Santa Claus comes in the night, and it's aftermath (not merry or joyous) lasts for hours and hours after. There is a bang, Emily falling, a flash of metal, a tackle (all Morgan) …in no particular order. In the end, they catch the guy. Most go down after a tackle from Morgan, only a small few have bested him. But it is Emily who takes the brunt of the mayhem this time. A bullet through the chest. Hotch rides with her in the back of the ambulance. And for the first time in a long time, en route to the hospital, he prays. Emily's hand squeezed beneath his own.
"Aaron," Emily says, and she chokes up blood when she does.
They don't let him past the OR doors as they wheel Emily into surgery. Of course, they don't. His badge can get him into just about everywhere. Except major surgery.
So, he waits.
In a cold, waiting room with his wife's blood staining his clothes, he waits.
He calls his children. It is JJ—she is the first person on his team who was able to get away—who reminds him to do so. His children panic, of course they do, but he himself is on the brink of panic as well. There is not much he can say to comfort them. Thankfully, JJ takes over the call and convinces them not to come to the hospital. It's late at night. Emily's still in surgery.
His world is breaking apart.
"Mr. Hotchner?" the doctor is a tall man with a salt and pepper beard and unblinking green eyes.
Hotch stands and it feels like the world shifts as he does. He's running on twelve hours of sleep, exhaustion a wave creeping ashore to wash him away.
"Your wife's going to make it. We successfully removed the bullet."
"Can I see her?"
The dark circles under her eyes are more pronounced. There's a bandage peeking out from beneath the neckline of her hospital gown. She looks cold and pale. But she is alive. Alive, alive, alive.
The wave crashes, pulls him under.
"Hey," he hears Emily call out from her side of their bed. Her hand reaches out and she gives his bicep a squeeze. "You okay?"
She's been home for a week now, having been discharged five days after being admitted. He'd been asleep, slumped over in the armchair beside her bed when she woke the morning after her surgery. He blinked once, twice before he realized she was awake, staring at him. He bolted upright then., fully awake.
"Emily."
Her first words after surgery were, "You did not sleep in that chair all night, did you?"
He couldn't do anything but laugh.
She rubs a small circle on his arm with her thumb now, pulls him back to the present. Emily gives him a small smile when he finally looks at her.
"I was just thinking," he admits.
"Uh oh."
"I almost lost you."
"But you didn't."
She tugs on his arm to bring him closer to her. He goes. The movement on her right side is slower, obscured by the sling that keeps her right arm tucked tightly against her. The bullet entered through her chest and lodged upwards toward her right shoulder. Emily presses a kiss to his lips. Once, twice. He holds the second one longer.
"I'm okay," she whispers against his mouth.
He knows she is. He just can't forget the blood.
Hotch knows his wife. Knows that she hates sitting and doing nothing more than anything. It's one reason she's so good at her job. But he can't help but notice Emily is enjoying watching him and the kids do the dirty work of putting up Christmas decorations this year.
It's a tiresome task that they usually complete the weekend after Thanksgiving just to get it over with. He can't even remember what caused the delay this year.
She does lend a hand when they decorate the tree. Every step she takes, though, is shadowed by Jason asking her if he can help her do this or that. He's been glued to her side all week. Florence, too. They both took seeing their mom in the hospital as well as expected. Which is not well at all. Even, Jack had been so scared that he took sick.
"Ta da!" Jason exclaims as Hotch sets the topper –a gold star—atop the tree. The gold, red, and green ornaments glisten under the fairy lights of the tree. It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas plays quietly on a speaker somewhere nearby. And it is starting to look like Christmas in the Hotchner household.
"Let's get a picture," Florence says, fishing her cellphone from the back pocket of her jeans.
It snows on Christmas morning.
Hotch, ever the early riser, stands in his bedroom window to watch as the white cascades down from the predawn sky. The rest of the house is quiet, save for the hum of the dryer downstairs in the laundry room. David, an early riser himself, is the first to wish him a Merry Christmas through text, a little after five. He shoots back a quick response and sneaks downstairs to make sure that "Santa" set everything up just right.
"You're up early," he hears Emily say somewhere beneath the blankets. She's got the comforter tucked under her chin and her head buried into her pillow.
He remembers walking in on her changing her bandages in the bathroom the night before. The wound that the bullet, and subsequent surgery, left was puckered and red but not completely healed. Not a completely a scar yet. That he can handle. Scars he's used to. His and hers. It was the purple, almost black bruising that got to him.
He draws a line when it comes to Emily. And he has a big decision to make.
"It's Christmas," he says and presses a kiss to her forehead, laughing despite himself at her intense struggle to keep her sleepy eyes open. "Go back to sleep. We've still got about an hour."
Hotch doesn't fall back asleep. Instead, he holds his wife close and enjoys her presence and the quiet. God knows this house won't hear silence for a few days once Jason wakes up, high on Christmas spirit. He lets his mind wander. He does not want to lose her again. And, if it means early retirement, so be it.
It will be a new year next week and he cannot believe that it was only last year that they fell apart. He won't dwell on it now, because they are together again. Gravity, it seems (and he smiles at the thought), had other plans.
"You're thinking too hard, again," Emily says. She is fully awake now and offers him a smile when he looks down at her. He smiles back and it grows into a grin when he hears little footsteps head in the direction of their bedroom.
end
A/N: Sorry, if I scared anyone in the beginning. I edited this in a rush, so I apologize if there are any mistakes. And I hope you liked the ending. My next multi-chapter upload, likely coming in the next few days, won't be CM. The next CM upload will be a one-shot coming in the next week or two. See you soon.