Well, I think/hope I've kept you sufficiently worried by not updating earlier.
School has begun again, and while it isn't so busy yet (seriously - 33 hours of lesson, 17 cancelled.), it will definitely become busier. Apparently, I've just begun one of the busiest years.
Anyway, I recommend re-reading the previous chapter first, because when I read the first sentences of this chapter I hardly remembered what it was about.
I'm kind of stuck with this story (again) - don't worry, there are some more chapters coming up, but after that... This is by far the longest story I've ever written, and it frightens me...
As always, thanks for the wonderful review and thank you for reading! Enjoy this chapter!
She had run to her office, the only place on the building that was solely hers. If she would just pretend to be busy with all the case files, they'd hopefully leave her alone. She had a lot to do, anyway. Maybe it would give her a distraction, no matter how gruesome the distraction was.
She was quickly interrupted though, by Hotch, who stuck his head around the door of her office.
"Conference room in ten minutes," he told her.
"I didn't receive any new cases," JJ said, frowning, quickly thinking whether he could know what had happened between her and Morgan. But Hotch nodded, apparently all focused on the conversation.
"An old friend called me personally," he told her, already walking away to find the next team member.
JJ thought for a moment. It wasn't too unusual that cases came in through a friend, but this was Hotch's first one. She already wondered what a friend of Hotch was like.
--
In the conference room, JJ automatically stood at her usual spot, with her back to the board, the way she usually started presenting to the team. Hotch stood next to her, waiting until everyone was present before he started talking. However, before he could start, Reid interrupted him. "Where's Rossi?"
"He asked for some time off," Hotch told them, and JJ was only slightly curious as to what Rossi was going to do in his free time. When Hotch started talking again, she redirected her attention back to him.
"And old friend in Baltimore called me because his unit doesn't know what to do anymore." Everyone nodded: they had often been called as a last resort.
"Eight women have been raped in the past two weeks. Before that, usually one or two women per week reported being assaulted or raped. This guy leaves no physical evidence and the women can't identify him."
"They only looked for help after he started raping more?" Reid asked, disbelieving. Hotch started answering, but JJ didn't hear him. She just stood there, numb and oblivious to the looks Morgan and Emily gave her.
She couldn't do it. She couldn't deal with such a case now, after everything… Feeling her breakfast coming up, she ran out of the room to the ladies' bathroom. Reaching the cubicle just in time, she kneeled down and threw up violently.
When the retching subsided, she grabbed some toilet paper to clean her mouth. She'd be stuck with the smell and taste for the rest of her day now. Great…
She quickly rose when she heard footsteps coming her way, which she knew belonged to Emily.
Emily entered the cubicle and kneeled next to JJ, pulling her hair back in case JJ was still vomiting. "JJ, are you okay?" She asked carefully. She didn't know how JJ would react at this point: she'd seen the exchange between Morgan and her, though she hadn't heard everything.
JJ didn't answer her, knowing Emily had it figured out anyway. Instead, she stood up and shakily walked to the faucet. Emily followed her and watched as she rinsed and splashed water across her face.
"You don't have to go, you know," she said, handing JJ a paper towel.
"I do. Rape cases are big news," JJ said, using her skills with the media as an excuse. But it wasn't the only reason.
She needed to toughen up and be less affected. Thousands of women were raped each day. She couldn't throw up about every one of them.
She'd have to be like the others were. They didn't get sick every time they heard the word 'rape'.
Walking back into the room, JJ smiled apologetically. "Ate something wrong at breakfast," she said to everyone, purposely avoiding looking at Morgan.
Hotch nodded, though a little suspicious. "We're leaving in thirty minutes by car," he informed the team. Then he left for his own office.
JJ stared at the woman on the screen, his latest victim, and wondered what she could do to distance herself.
There was only one thing she could think of, and she had made promises not to do that ever again. She couldn't break the promises she had made to the only people who had accepted Shelby for who she was.
It was very tempting, though. Peter was far away, too far to know anything. She hadn't heard from any of them again. She didn't even know whether they were all still alive.
She had thought of it sometimes, to go to Scott or Daisy and simply talk, get the support she had needed so much in those first years. When she had had the nightmares almost every night, only being able to suppress them with sleeping pills. When images of him on her and Jess, images of all the others came to her mind and didn't leave.
But she hadn't. She was too afraid of their reactions: what if they were bothered by her coming back with her problems, while they were doing fine in their own worlds?
She didn't want to admit the problems she still had. Why couldn't she just be who she was now? Why did the memories never go away, why couldn't she have become Jennifer Jareau and have become a completely new person with it?
It drove her crazy, the way she could still smell him, feel him caress her body as if it was normal. As if it really was love. It nearly made her vomit, but she'd managed to push away the memories over the years.
Now it came back though, with these women being raped, men invading their bodies without their permission, men destroying their lives… Like Walt had destroyed hers, like he was still destroying it…
"JJ, everything okay?" Hotch had come back to the conference room to pick up the pen he'd forgotten there. He had found JJ staring at the screen as if in a trance.
Instead of answering him, she just continued staring at the screen, obviously lost in her own world. He moved in front of her and gently took her shoulders.
She yelped and Hotch jumped back, momentarily overtaken by surprise. "Keep your hands off me!" She nearly shouted before realizing who she was shouting to.
"Hotch… I'm sorry," she said, discreetly wiping away one single tear that had formed in the corner of her eye. "I thought you were someone else."
She knew another one of his speeches was going to come and mentally prepared herself for it. Hotch was a very predictable man at times.
"Whatever this is, it's affecting you personally and I have a right to know whatever is going on. I have respected your privacy so far, but this is getting out of hand."
He looked at her, expecting a reply. Well, she was going to give him one.
"Hotch, I've got it under control, I'll have it under control. I won't bother you again." She turned her back on him and walked away with a straight back.
Once she was in the sanctuary of her office, she slumped down on a chair. What had she done? Had she really pushed away someone who genuinely wanted to help her?
The car ride was awkward to say the least. JJ was in a car with Hotch, Reid and Garcia, who had decided to come along on this case to assist with technical needs.
As usual, Hotch hardly showed any emotion, but JJ thought she knew him well enough to know he was upset, worried and quite possibly angry at her for treating him like that.
Maybe he didn't know what to do, how to help her. He was her boss, the leader of a team full of problems. He had a great sense of responsibility, and he felt he was responsible for her sanity.
She was touched at his worry, not only for her but for all her colleagues. She sometimes privately thought that if he had directed that worry and care at Haley, they maybe would've made it. But it wasn't her job to investigate her boss' private life.
Reid and Garcia were talking about something technical, and JJ didn't have the intention to listen to it. Blocking them out, she turned her head and absently looked at the scenery outside.
--
It hadn't exactly been a coincidence that Emily and Morgan were in a car together. Although it seemed like one, Emily knew Morgan had waited for her intentionally, even though he could've chosen to go with the other car.
The moment they had started to drive, Morgan started talking. He came straight to the point.
"You know what's wrong with JJ?" he asked. It wasn't a question as much as a statement.
"I think I do," Emily answered carefully. She honestly didn't want to spill the beans before she had JJ's permission, and if she'd been JJ, she'd have been afraid to tell anyone.
"So do I," Morgan said, and Emily was surprised at his harsh voice.
"How?" she asked, thinking she would maybe hear what the argument he and JJ had had was about.
"I kind of figured out," Morgan said, keeping his eyes on the quiet road ahead of him.
Emily nodded. It didn't take someone with personal experience to have suspicions, though it did help.
"She admitted it to me, but she ran away right after that."
He turned to her for the first time, and she saw some of the desperation she felt in his eyes. "We need to help her."
Emily nodded again, incapable to think of anything she could say without revealing too much.
"I… talked… to her," she stated slowly. "That's a step forward."
"It is," Morgan agreed with her. "But you know just as well as I do that it's not enough."
Emily sighed, the first true sign of her insecurity. "I know, I just… we shouldn't force her."
"Well if she won't talk then maybe we should," he said rather roughly.
"She's closer to talking than earlier. She just doesn't know how to start it. And it's hard… after staying silent for so long."
"I know," Morgan replied, and Emily silently cursed herself for not thinking of him before. "But she needs it, he's destroying her!"
She agreed with him, but she was just as desperate as he was.
Wow, that last part looks stupid, with a break almost every sentence.
I have no idea if friends can call in like that, but now they can. Also, Morgan is OOC, I know, but just imagine it's his emotions talking. Okay? :P