A/N: Look an update! I'm so, so sorry that it's taken so long. I've been working on this chapter for so long and I wasn't that happy with it for a while. Many thanks to DaisyDay for being my beta.
Please review, I would love to know what you think about the story.
Also, there's probably only about one or two chapters left in this story.
Just as a heads up.
Love,
BRTxoxo
After the nurse had left, and pulled the curtain back from between Spencer and Katrina, the young doctor woke up.
"Kat?" his voice was low and sleepy.
"hmm?" She hummed in response, still thinking about her conversation with Agent Hotchner.
"Are you okay?"
Her mouth twitched in a smile. "As good as I can be right now, considering."
Spencer moved his bed so he could sit up, wincing as his shoulder shifted. "When did you wake up?"
"Not too long ago. Maybe fifteen minutes. Um, your friend was in here. The tall dark one. He said you asked him to wait with me." She picked at her nails, blushing again
"Oh Hotch?"
She nodded.
An awkward silence ensued for a few minutes before Katrina spoke again.
"Spencer, I don't remember much of anything after Sweeny Todd left us. I mean I remember you being…" she choked on her words. "I remember what he did, but after that… it's all just a blur."
"Kat you… you were starting to get sick. You still took care of me, like you always did, but you were… just getting worse. I was… I thought-"
"Katrina?"
Garcia's voice interrupted Spencer's and the two companions looked to the blonde standing in the doorway.
Katrina's breath caught in her throat and more tears blurred her vision until the woman in the doorway was a colorful blob. She shook them away, convinced that when she opened her eyes her long lost cousin wouldn't be there and she would just have imagined the whole thing. But when she opened her eyes again, she was still there, relief written on her face.
"Penelope!"
Penelope Garcia gave a teary laugh and quickly made her way to Katrina's bedside where Hotch had been sitting to give her a long hug, Morgan following close behind.
"I thought I'd never see you again," Katrina said, smiling through her tears. "We didn't hear anything from you after the crash. We thought…"
Penelope smiled a bit guiltily as she pulled away. "I should have told you I was okay. I was just so upset I went underground for a while. Not even Derek heard from me for a while." She nodded at the taller man sitting at Spencer's bedside, laughing with the young doctor.
"Is he your… you know…"
Penelope actually blushed. "What? No! No we're just friends. We work together. We're just really good friends."
"Friends that flirt shamelessly at all hours of the day."
"How did you-"
"Spencer and I spent nearly seven months together in a basement with nothing but stories from each other to entertain ourselves with. He told me all about you and Derek." Katrina smiled at her cousin. "And, you may say that it is strictly platonic but the way that Spencer described it, it sounds like you two are like Rose and the Doctor."
Penelope raised an eyebrow at her cousin. "You watch Doctor Who?"
"No, Spencer told me stories about it though." She smiled, her eyes becoming unfocused as she watched as Spencer spoke with his hands. Her view was obstructed by the curtain once more as Penelope yanked it back between the two beds.
The blonde tech genius waited for the two other agents to continue talking before whispering fiercely to the young cat-woman. "You have a crush on Reid!"
"No I don't," Katrina whispered back, turning red once more.
"Don't lie to me, I know that look! You had that same look when you first saw Jareth the Goblin King!"
"I did not!"
"Me thinks the lady doth protest too much."
"Penelope," she whined, trying her best not turn a darker shade of red, her ears flat against her head.
"Kat I know when I see a crush, and you my dear, are in deep."
Katrina pushed herself into her pillows, covering her face with her hands.
"Don't defy me."
Kat spread her fingers wide enough to glare through them at her cousin. She mused on how easily they had slipped back into their normal routine, as if all those years of not knowing about each other had never happened. "Okay, Jareth."
Penelope smiled triumphantly and scooted her chair closer.
Katrina sighed and dropped her hands, a small smile spreading across her lips that she had no control over. "I do… like him a great deal…"
"I knew it!"
"But you are so wrong," Katrina shot back. She lowered her voice again. "I am in way past crush."
Her cousin gasped in excitement. "Tell me everything."
. . .
About fifteen minutes later, there was a knock on the door frame. "Katrina? Doctor Pierce is here."
Daniel came into the room and Penelope stood up to let him have the chair next to Kat. The girl in the bed smiled at him as he sat down. A shorter woman walked in behind him with dark brown hair and a tan leather jacket. Katrina's ears flicked.
"Uncle Daniel."
"Hello Kat." He smiled at his niece. "This is Kate Moretti, a good friend of mine. And this is Max Lewicki, my personal assistant."
"I didn't think I'd see you again," Kat said, looking down at the blanket covering her legs. "I didn't think I'd see anyone again."
Daniel gently covered her hand with his. He took in the bruises on her face, the way her eyes seemed to have sunk since he'd last seen her and her tightly bound wrist. Her ears were still matted and unruly, and her hair was almost lifeless. He flicked his gaze over to Kate and Max, curious to see their reactions. On the opposite side of the bed, Kate sat down and smiled at Katrina.
"It's very nice to finally meet you Katrina."
"Katrina there's something I need to ask you. I know that it will be difficult living without Taryn, and that living in your old apartment won't be easy, not to mention lonely. What I'd… like, is if you would come live with me. In Chicago."
"Chicago?" Kat was silent.
"I have a very strict diet, I could help give you the right foods that you need to get better and need to live. I have room for you, and if you're still interested in learning about psychology, mental disorders, personality disorders, mental health, you could sit in on a few of the classes I teach or teach yourself with the books that I have."
The entire room was silent, even the three agents on the other side of the curtain.
"Um, that is if you want to."
Kat gave her uncle a small smile. "I'll think about it. Thank you." She gave his hand a squeeze.
Daniel reciprocated her smile and then turned around the curtain to greet Spencer.
"Katrina we were going to stay here until you were well enough to be let out of the hospital and then through the trial. Since it involves so many victims as well as a federal agent, the court date is set to be in about two weeks," Kate explained. "Although, I'm sure half of Daniel's time will be spent with Doctor Reid. They became rather close during the week or so we were out here at the beginning of your… containment."
Kat smiled shyly. "It's very easy to get attached to Spencer. Very easy…"
. . .
Across the curtain, Doctor Pierce stood on one side of Reid's bed; Morgan and Garcia were on the other side.
"How are you feeling Doctor Reid?" he held his arms crossed tightly over his chest, but his eyes were warm with relief that the young doctor was still alive.
"I've been better." Reid smiled at the older man. "How is Kat? Is she doing alright? I talked to her for a little bit but then these two showed up and interrupted." He turned his smile over to Morgan and Garcia.
"She's doing fine. I'm a little worried about her psyche considering the emotional stress and abuse she's gone through over the past seven months, but so far it seems relatively normal. She's very peculiar, being half cat she possesses many cat like characteristics. She needs to be with someone-she can't stand being alone, but she's also an introvert. When she was younger, she would spend time with me while Taryn was busy. I would be doing homework and she would tiptoe into the room and sit in the corner so she could read or color. She liked having someone talk out loud about anything-stories, my ridiculous psychological theories, sometimes she'd have her mother talk through the Sudoku puzzles she was working on." He smiled fondly at the memories of little Katrina, her hair tied back with a bow and a matching one on her tail because she thought it was cute.
"He's right," Garcia said. "When we saw each other, she would never really participate in the games that Taryn and I played and she would just sit in the corner doing her own thing, but when it was just me and her, we played board games, watched movies, and played dress up. You should have seen her then, pink and purple bows in her hair and a matching one on her tail. She-"
"Is sitting right over here and can hear you talking about her."
Sometime during Daniel's little speech, Kate had moved the curtain back and Katrina watched them with a loving smirk on her face.
"Uncle Daniel I'm fine. My psyche is fine. To be honest, Spencer probably saved me while we were there. If it hadn't been for the journal or for Spencer, I would have gone insane." She blushed again and Garcia smothered a giggle.
Spencer blushed as well and moved to come back his hair to hide it. "Does anyone have any food?"
"And if you do," Katrina chirped, "Please, no crackers."
The two former captives shared a look, and deep down, Katrina knew there was no way that she'd be able to leave Virginia if it meant leaving Spencer behind. She was definitely in way, way past crush.
. . .
It had been a few hours since Morgan, Garcia and Daniel &c. had left Spencer and Kat alone. Since then, Hotch, Gideon, Elle, and JJ had come in to say hi and meet Katrina, and when they left, they'd been given food-real food, not just crackers. Spencer didn't know if he would ever be able to look at a cracker again with shivering. The nurse had come in with a tray of water, jell-o (much to the delight of both patients), and some chicken noodle soup that had Kat's eyes lighting up like a Christmas tree.
Spencer couldn't bring himself to stop thinking about much happiness it had brought him to see her smiling again. Over the past week, he'd been so worried about her, so scared that she wouldn't wake up one morning that he had hardly slept. Not that he usually slept anyway.
He gently massaged his bandaged wrist, wincing slightly at the soreness of it. His brown eyes took in the white walls of the hospital room, the black and white clock that hung on the wall in front of him, the muted news on the TV that was rolling footage of Sweeny Todd being led to jail in handcuffs, the bustling walk of nurses outside the closed door.
The machines hooked up to Kat and him were quieter now that they'd woken up once and were out of danger of falling into a coma, and the only sound in the room was their breathing, the soft whir of the heart monitors, and the light ticking of the clock.
Kat had fallen asleep not too long ago, and they'd been talking about the Doctor Who episodes she'd finally been able to watch as her eyes had slowly slipped shut. He'd watched her as her breathing had slowly evened out into the soft purr that it was now.
Spencer leaned back into the pillows and draped his arms across his chest to stare at the white ceiling. He'd heard his co-agent whispering with his former captive companion while he'd talked with Morgan, but had been unable to make out what was being said and had therefore ignored it. Of course then he'd heard Doctor Pierce invite Kat to live with him and that had stopped both him and Garcia mid joke. His heart and sunk at the possibility of never seeing Kat again, and then he'd stopped his thoughts immediately as they'd started down the path of seeing her with someone else. Anyone else that wasn't him.
His face flushed at the memory of lightly kissing Kat, and the way that she had laid his head in her lap to try and comfort him, but the he felt cold when he remembered her saying that she didn't remember what had happened. Spencer refused to acknowledge the tears the stung his tired eyes and rolled onto his right side, watching Kat as she slowly breathed in and out, and listening to the soft purr of her breathing as he let his eyes slip closed, ignoring the alien pain he felt in his chest.
