Author's Note: Again, you guys were super responsive with the feedback, so, here you go! It's not like the first time around where I had to actually 'write' the next chapter, (which clearly takes time) here I'm just reading them over for the repost, and this was one story that actually was in really good shape on the first post. So if it looks like you all are 'into' the story arc, I will try to be accommodating where I can :)
And again opening with Dave, because as you'll come to see before this arc has ended, when you're down in the shit, we should all be so lucky as to have a friend like Dave Rossi!
He's picking up narration where Emily passed out.
Prompt Set #33 (August 2011)
Show: Millennium
Title Challenge: Somehow the Devil Got Behind Me
Blood In, Blood Out
Dave's eyes popped as he saw the UNSUB's left hand turned to hamburger right in front of him.
Hotch had just shot off his fingers.
HOLY SHIT!
Before Rossi could even mentally process that development . . . that was NOT a standard 'disarming' technique(!) . . . two more bullets slammed into the UNSUB's body. One that took off his left knee cap.
And then one straight into his upper left quadrant.
From the fresh screech of pain at the last bullet, Dave was assuming that one had shattered the clavicle. And although the UNSUB wasn't even close to being dead . . . the continued screaming was evidence enough of that . . . it was clear that he was in agony. But of course . . . Dave's jaw clenched in fury as he ran over to subdue their suspect . . . that was the point. To make it hurt.
A lot.
And Hotch had been quite successful on that front. He'd also inflicted all of that damage, some dead center hits, without once breaking stride as he raced across the abandoned saloon.
His destination though wasn't Emily's abductor . . . it was Emily herself.
He was calling her name and dropping down to his knees beside her body before Dave and Derek had even reached the howling creature on the floor off behind them. And seeing that JJ and Reid were running to help Hotch with Emily, Rossi shifted his full attention down to the mess in front of him. His fist clenched.
He needed to be dealt with.
And although Dave's "preferred" method of dealing with this UNSUB would have been to blow his brains out, unfortunately that was off the table. Their window on that one had closed when Hotch had stopped firing. His initial actions, though not "routine," were obviously in the heat of the moment. Now though, things were 'getting under control.'
Dave hated that.
Still, as Derek ran up, jamming his boot into the UNSUB's throat and his gun into his face, all while screaming at him to shut the fuck up, Rossi felt a small bit of satisfaction cut through his personal rage at what this monster had done to their friend. Basically, he was pleased to see that Derek was showing no consideration . . . or care . . . for the UNSUB's injuries or feelings. He had of course forfeited such simple rights.
It was nice to know that Derek knew that too.
So while Morgan continued to crush the UNSUB's throat, Dave quickly kicked the knife and the poker off in two different directions.
They spun across the filthy floorboards, with each clattering off into a different corner of the saloon.
He made a mental note . . . somebody would have to retrieve them later.
But once they were well clear of the UNSUB's remaining fingers . . . and he had the nod from Morgan that he was covered . . . Dave leaned down to do a quick frisk for additional weapons.
As his hands became sticky with the blood that was now covering half of the mangled body in front of him, Rossi's jaw clenched again. This time in a disgusted grimace. Blowing off body parts tended to make a mess.
But he always forgot just how much.
Still though, he continued moving along, ignoring the blood and other fluids . . . the UNSUB had pissed his pants . . . as he checked for hidden guns and knives, or maybe a hand grenade shoved into a place that it shouldn't be. He'd once found one of those on a frisk.
That had not been a good day.
But today, the Weapons Fairy at least, seemed to be on their side. Dave wasn't finding anything else at his feet besides a sniveling little piece of shit. And as he started to lean back . . . he was about to stand up . . . out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hotch was now turning Emily over. And that's when Dave realized.
She still wasn't moving.
Her eyes were shut, her body was limp and bloodied, and she was lying very, very . . . he swallowed the lump forming . . . still.
Fresh waves of rage and grief washed over him in equal parts at the sudden realization that Emily could very well be dead. So Dave opted to not so kindly finish up his body frisk with a two fingered jab to the busted clavicle.
The UNSUB screamed again.
And again Derek told him to shut the fuck up, though that time he punctuated it with a smack from his Glock. For every action there was an equal . . . whatever.
The miasma folded around Dave's brain as he came to his feet . . . didn't matter.
Little mattered now if Emily was dead.
The point was . . . Dave tried to refocus beyond the image of Emily lying there growing cold in front of him . . . that although he would have loved to play tag team torture games with Derek for a few more hours, and he knew Derek would be up for it as well, they needed this asshole alive.
And they needed him alive in (relatively) decent condition.
Because under the circumstances, an in-custody death . . . as in a death POST the initial gunshot wounds receiving during his apprehension . . . would be very difficult to explain.
Impossible really.
So even though he wanted to start peeling of fingernails, instead Dave reluctantly . . . and with a tight grimace . . . shook his head no to Morgan.
They were done.
Derek's own expression hardened even further. Of course he knew the score as well as Dave did, but that didn't mean he had to like it. And Rossi could see his brain whirling as his teeth ground together. Then a second later he made his own decision . . . as Dave had known that he would . . . by pressing his boot down just a little bit harder.
The UNSUB's cries morphed into a quiet whimper.
It was steady and soft. Something akin to an animal that has its limb stuck in a trap.
But this animal wasn't going anywhere.
And although Dave wanted to protest . . . scuff marks on the throat were going to require an explanation at the hospital . . . they did need to hold him down somehow. And they had no rope.
Ordinarily of course they'd put him in handcuffs, but handcuffs were rather hard to manage on a man that was missing a hand.
The pressure on his carotid would do the trick.
So with that matter addressed, temporarily at least . . . that amount of pressure could result in brain damage if kept up too long . . . Dave finally slipped his pistol into his holster. Then his attention snapped back to the scene across the room.
The others were a solid twelve feet away.
"UNSUB's secure, Hotch." He called out before swallowing, "how's Emily?"
The question came out with a slight bit of hesitation. If she wasn't okay . . . if she really was dead . . . Dave didn't actually want to know it.
Not yet.
The belief that she was alive was the only thing keeping him from pulling his weapon again and finishing the thought that he'd had when he ran up. Well, that belief and his worries for the others. The ones that needed their pensions.
He didn't.
But he knew that if she was dead, none of them would be thinking of their careers, or their futures. Those were concerns of another world.
The one with the rules.
And right now they were in the Wild West . . . literally. And the Wild West had no rules. So in that scenario, Dave's concerns were not for the UNSUB's safety . . . fuck him . . . they were solely for his team. Because if Emily was gone, gone with them out there all alone . . . the only law for a hundred miles . . . it was going to be one hell of a mess to clean up.
And Dave didn't know if he had a shovel big enough.
And although Hotch clearly had to have heard the question he'd asked about Emily . . . again, he was only twelve feet away . . . he was paying Dave no attention at all.
That's when Rossi realized that even though Reid and JJ were hovering right behind him, both also pleading with him to tell them how she was, for Hotch, they didn't exist. At the moment, there was only one other person in the room with him.
Emily.
His laser sharp intensity was focused entirely on her, and checking her vital signs.
Since Dave had last looked over, Hotch had turned her onto her back. And now he had one set of fingertips pressed to her throat, while the other was pressed down over her heart.
He looked, well, if Dave wasn't there he wouldn't have believed it, but it really looked like he was about to cry. And seeing that raw emotion seeping through, the same raw emotion that Dave could see bleeding off of Spencer and JJ . . . and Morgan with his hot weapon still pointed at the UNSUB's head . . . Dave realized what was happening. That splintering was beginning.
They were all preparing themselves for her death.
At that horrific thought . . . of the hellfire that was going to be unleashed if it were true . . . Dave's own little shell, the one that he was hoping to maintain simply to control the others, began to crack just a bit.
Though he hadn't known Emily as long as they had, the thought of her loss . . . the thought of her death . . . was just as grievous a future to him, as it was to the rest of the team. Beyond just the immediate considerations (fears) of what would happen to the UNSUB, and what the hell story he would have to tell, there was the question that should never be asked.
What would that be like if she were dead?
Before Dave could fully process those images . . . the ones without Emily at her desk, or cracking jokes on the plane . . . Hotch's head suddenly snapped back.
"SHE'S ALIVE!"
The words came out as a roar. And although Dave's right hand quivered slightly at the noise . . . his trigger hand tended to do that when startled . . . he saw the kids literally jump off the ground.
Hotch had really scared the shit out of them.
But before the youngest agents could react beyond that, before any of them could react beyond that, Hotch started being Hotch again.
He was yelling orders.
"Reid!" Hotch barked as he twisted around to make eye contact with his youngest team member.
"YES SIR!" Reid croaked back immediately.
Hotch pointed with his left hand towards the door . . . his right hand he'd moved down to Emily's hip.
He wasn't letting go of her again.
"Go back to the SUV," he continued, trying to keep his voice calm, "look for blankets, and see if there's a med kit under any of the seats. If you can't find one, just find something relatively sterile we can use to cover these wounds. If we don't find some way to dress them, then she's going to bleed out," his voice started to catch and he cleared it, "do you understand me?"
The chopper was somewhere behind them . . . at his instruction, JJ had used the SAT phone to radio their position when they were halfway across the desert . . . but he was worried that it wouldn't get there soon enough. Emily was not in good shape.
Not at all.
At that reminder of how weak and thready her pulse had been beneath his fingertips, Hotch's eyes started to burn. But he quickly blinked away the moisture attempting to pool.
No time for that right now.
And even if there was, he sure as hell wasn't going to get that emotional in front of the others. His feelings for Emily were ENTIRELY his business.
Nobody else's.
Reid had been nodding furiously as soon as Hotch started talking . . . his body was practically vibrating with adrenaline, he just wanted to do something to help . . . so before his boss had even finished the last sentence, he'd begun running backwards across the room.
"Med kit and blankets, got it!" He yelled.
The yell came right before he slammed into one of the old bar stools. It went clattering to the floor . . . one of the legs splintered off, nearly tripping him . . . but it didn't slow him down any.
He just spun around and ran towards the door.
Seeing that Reid clearly had all cylinders firing on this one task . . . though at that moment Hotch would have given his weight in gold for the kid to have an actual MEDICAL degree to back up that title of doctor . . . his focus snapped over to JJ.
Since his attention had been pulled away from Emily, JJ had moved over to her other side. She was now crouched down beside her friend, kneeling in a pool of blood.
The image made Hotch's heart hurt.
But JJ seemed oblivious to the mess as her fingertips brushed gently along Emily's temple. She was whispering something in her ear.
And she had tears running down her face.
Hotch did his best to ignore them.
"JJ," his tone was softer than it had been with Spencer. He wasn't immune to the crying.
Or the need to.
"I want you to go help Reid. But first," he raised his voice slightly as she started to push herself up, "get back on the SAT phone. Confirm the last set of coordinates that we gave them, and get an ETA on arrival, is that understood?"
"Yep," JJ sniffled as she brushed her hand across her face and jumped to her feet, "understood."
It wasn't until she was standing, that JJ realized her jeans were stuck to her legs. It was Emily's blood.
It had soaked through the black denim.
That realization . . . the absolute horror of it . . . was enough to make her burst into tears all over again. But that didn't slow her down as she turned and started running towards the open door.
Emily was her best friend, and her best friend needed her.
She wouldn't let her down!
JJ had cleared half the room before something else occurred to Hotch. So he yelled after her.
"JJ!" he called out, "make sure to tell them that she has severe burns on her upper torso, multiple stab wounds in the same area, and that there's internal bleeding of unknown origin. There's blood coming out of her mouth."
Though for JJ's sake he tried to keep some level of clinical detachment in his voice . . . the woman was already in tears, and he didn't want to make it worse . . . his words did warble slightly at the end.
The detachment probably wasn't fooling anyone anyway.
And actually just saying the words out loud . . . just saying what that monster had done to her . . . was enough to send his rage to the boiling point again.
That was the rage that had blown off the UNSUB's hand . . . and his knee cap.
He'd JUST stopped himself before he'd taken off his head.
But now that blackness was coming back again, like a narrowing of his field of vision. All that he could see then was Emily . . . his Emily . . . broken on the floor. Stabbed and beaten.
Burned.
And even though he knew that his real focus needed to be on helping his girl . . . on getting her to wake up . . . his precarious control was starting to slip. He'd been wound too tightly for too many hours. His free hand started to curl into a fist . . . and he needed an outlet for this fury.
And the outlet was here in this old saloon.
Old time justice was now on tap!
The words were ridiculous . . . something out of a bad movie . . . but they were the first ones to pop into his head. So as soon as JJ disappeared through the doorway . . . Hotch didn't want her to see this . . . he whirled around, his eyes raked a scalding glance over the still sobbing UNSUB lying in a heap in front of Morgan and Rossi.
But Hotch wasn't really seeing the other men.
In that moment, all he was seeing then were all of the things that he was capable of doing to this person who had inflicted that suffering on his girl. And it wasn't just capability. It was a want.
A need.
He needed to hurt him.
And with over a decade of nightmarish case files in his head . . . over a decade of hellish pictures in his mind . . . the options for that hurt were long.
And they were horrifying.
The images of abuse and torture he was remembering, would make most people run screaming for the exits. But right now, even as his gut churned with disgust and self-loathing, he was simply using them as a reference guide.
A flip book on How To Dismember a Human Being.
And as those pictures began flying faster and faster through his brain, Hotch's burning gaze suddenly stopped to freeze over the UNSUB's lower body. His teeth began to grind, blood filled his mouth as he bit through his tongue.
He pulled his other hand off of Emily's hip.
That one curled into a fist too. He clenched it.
Hotch was just about to get up . . . just about to do something absolutely horrific . . . when he suddenly was able to grasp onto a little thread of sanity. And it was only because he realized something.
He'd let go of Emily.
He'd made a promise to himself . . . and to her . . . that he would protect her. That he wouldn't leave her alone again.
And he was about to do just that.
His head snapped up.
His furious . . . wild . . . gaze ran over Derek's before locking onto Rossi's. He could see the alarm in the other men's eyes.
'Yeah guys,' Hotch thought bitterly, 'you should be pretty fucking alarmed right now! I'm pretty fucking ALARMED myself!'
It was taking almost everything in him to keep his place by Emily's side. His fingers had curled tightly around her hand. The stickiness of the blood there wasn't helping his control . . . it was just one more trigger really . . . but he knew that's where he belonged. So that's where he needed to stay.
With her.
And he just needed to keep repeating that to himself.
But first . . . he jerked his head towards the screaming freakshow on the ground . . . this abomination needed to be dealt with.
"You need to DO something with him!" He choked out, "and I mean right now! You need to do SOMETHING, Rossi! PLEASE!"
The words ended on a pitch that hurt even his ears. Because at that moment, Hotch had never been more terrified in his life. Not for himself, not even for Emily . . . but for what he was about to do. If Dave didn't get the UNSUB out of his sight . . . and if he didn't get him to SHUT THE FUCK UP(!) . . . then Hotch was going to over there, and he was going to rip off that man's testicles.
That's the last image that had popped into his mind. The one that his brain had settled on.
Castration.
It was the only punishment that seemed fit. He wasn't really a man anyway . . . Hotch had justified to himself . . . he was a monster. Men didn't treat women this way, so the testicles were unneeded. They were superfluous.
Baggage.
Baggage that Hotch was on the verge of removing with his bare hands. Of course he knew that it would be wrong . . . there weren't words for how wrong it would be . . . but that didn't matter. This creature had done unspeakable things to his Emily . . . Hotch's hand started to shake . . . so he would perform an unspeakable act in return.
It would be just.
That was the rationale anyway, but still . . . he swallowed as his hardened gaze fell back to Emily's bloodied body . . . a small part of him was trying to prevent him from crossing that line.
The one where he physically mutilated another human being.
Because not only was that a line he wasn't sure that he could come back from, but . . . his face suddenly contorted in pain as he stared down at his girl . . . what would she think of him? Would Emily think that he was a monster too? And if so, what would she do?
Would she leave him and take the baby?
She might.
Most women would. And although Emily wasn't like most women . . . that's how she had become his girl, and that's why he was falling in love with her . . . that would still be a horrendous thing to ask her to accept.
Too much probably.
And the worry that she wouldn't understand him . . . that this blackness in him would frighten her away . . . was just enough to keep him in his place. Just enough to keep him by her side.
For the moment.
And though he was trying to make himself focus on her . . . on a future without her . . . it was so hard to do with the UNSUB SCREAMING off behind him!
It was like he was just BEGGING for it!
Hotch's head snapped up again . . . that blackness was returning . . . but then Derek did something that kept him by Emily's side.
He shattered the UNSUB's face.
And it happened with such a satisfying crunch as the bones were pulverized beneath his fists . . . the blood splatter covered Dave and Morgan as the UNSUB's nose became a pile of jelly . . . that Hotch's own rage was washed back down into the darkness.
And then it was quiet.
And he could breathe again.
Any other day . . . any other moment in time . . . Hotch would have reprimanded Derek for his actions. Said something official, said that that was wrong. That they didn't treat their prisoners that way.
But this was today.
And today was different. So he just nodded a tight thanks to the man across the room.
It was a thanks for saving his soul.
And he could see Derek's eyes were watering as he tipped his head in return. It was a gentleman's agreement.
One that would never be discussed.
And as Morgan and Rossi turned to begin cleaning up the mess that had been made . . . they were dragging it away . . . Hotch was finally able to focus his full attention on Emily alone.
After all . . . one of his tears dropped onto her cheek and he brushed it away.
That's where it belonged.
A/N 2: It was a little bit of a juggling act trying to touch on everybody individually, if only for a moment. I couldn't do the whole scene from each of their viewpoints individually . . . that would have been rather awkward :) . . . so I was went with just their actions speaking to convey their thoughts. From JJ's crying as she whispered in Emily's ear, to Reid tripping over himself to run back to the SUV, to Morgan breaking the UNSUB's face to stop Hotch from doing something far worse.
And I think the far worse, given what he did to Foyet, was realistically where Hotch's brain was going. Their romantic relationship might only be a few months old, but he's falling hard for her, and she's going to be the mother of his child, so his primal instincts there, and his rage, are going to come boiling up.
And lastly, our old friend 'Dave the All Seeing' trying to keep a lid on the pressure cooker. I see that being his role, a little older, with a little less to lose, and so because of that, caring more about the others than himself.
And the 'All Seeing Dave' will see quite a bit in the upcoming part ;)
Thanks again, everyone!