Finale Fix

BONUS PROMPT: Surprise (Buffy)

CHAPTER FIVE

Not Out of the Woods Yet

Emily and Cami returned to the waiting room soon after, Emily even more subdued with the new revelations, only to find the team crowded around another orderly. This one was a woman, and looked a little worse for wear. Emily felt her breath catch at the smear of red on her throat. There was a really good chance that was Hotch's blood there.

"Good news," Penelope said as the first one to spot them both. She reached out and grasped Emily's arm. "He's out of surgery."

Emily felt her chest swell with happiness, but managed to withhold her tears. "How is he?"

"Nowhere near out of the woods," the woman replied. "But he made it through surgery which is a good start. Are you family?"

Emily nodded. Cami had already created the ruse, it made sense to go with it for the time being. She stepped away with the nurse as she indicated, though Emily never really understood this part. It wasn't as if she was going to keep whatever the woman said to her a secret.

"The doctor should be out to speak with you shortly about the specifics, but your husband lost a lot of blood. The consensus is that we keep him in a drug-induced coma for a few days, to make sure that his body responds to the antibiotics, the blood transfusions and the surgery as a whole. You'll be able to visit him."

Emily could only nod again, not fully trusting her voice to come out as strong and collected as she wanted it to be. "Thank you," she managed.

The nurse squeezed her arm, then walked away.

Emily returned back to her colleagues, clearing her throat. "Um… she didn't tell me much. He pulled through the surgery and the hospital wants to keep him in a drug-induced coma for a bit to make sure he's actually healing…"

She was going to lose it. There was no question. Right there, in front of the team, she was going to freaking lose it. Her nails dug into her palm with the stress of keeping the tearing sobs at bay.

"Can we visit?" Penelope asked, not bothering to follow Emily's stoic lead.

Emily nodded. "He'll be in a coma, but the nurse said visiting was okay." She saw Dave exchange a look with Derek. Then he turned back to her.

"As soon as the doctor gets out here with more news, you go on back and see him, okay?" he said and she knew it wasn't the question he'd worded it as.

She didn't argue. She didn't want to argue and by the look on Dave's face it wouldn't have done her much good anyway. Her stomach churned because of her conversation with Cami and the automatic reactions of the team. Had they known about it? Why hadn't anyone said anything? Pointed it out to her? Something! Sure, it wasn't the first time she'd been worried about him, but this time he'd been freaking shot! How else was she supposed to react? And it wasn't her fault her compartmentalizing walls were shot because of the case they'd just completed. Good Lord, she really was going to lose it.

She cleared her throat, grasping at straws for something else. Then, it came to her. "Who shot him?"

The team looked surprised at the question and it struck Emily that maybe no one had considered that part of it.

"How could we not think of that?" JJ murmured, more to herself. "How are we going to find the guy?"

"It's a local jurisdiction," Derek lamented. "It's not our call."

"He's Hotch," Penelope argued. "The Bureau will let us play."

Dave sighed. "It's the locals, not the Bureau that we have to worry about."

"I don't care." They all swung their heads to face Emily at her quiet words. "I don't care about the locals, I don't care about protocol. He's one of us and we fight for our own. Screw protocol. Screw whether we're working this officially or not. He's fighting for his God damned life and that bastard isn't going to get away with this."

She knew she said it with enough conviction to scare the team. They were all looking at her a little shell shocked. She was the strong one, the match to Hotch in that regard, but apparently even Emily's mask could break. Plus, hadn't that been what Hotch had said when Penelope had been shot? Hadn't he been convinced that nothing mattered more than finding out who had put one of his people that close to death? They were a family, a family with the added bonus of having the training to work these cases.

"Aaron Hotchner?"

They all turned, facing the doctor that had come up behind them. The man tried to smile. "I operated on Agent Hotchner. The bullet caught his aorta and that's where the bleeding came from. Luckily for us, it was a through and through so we didn't have to find the bullet. As I'm sure Nurse Marquese told you, we're keeping in him a coma until we're sure everything's going to be fine. The aorta can be tricky."

"What does that mean?" Cami asked, stepping up beside her mother.

"It means that with the proper care and some careful monitoring, he'll be fine. It's going to take time and lots of recovery, but there's even the chance he could go back to work. He's lucky."

Emily wasn't sure lucky was the correct word for it, but she nodded anyway. "Thank you," she said quietly.

The doctor graced her with a sympathetic smile. "He's out, but we can let one person into see him." His eyes stayed fixed on Emily the whole time.

But it took a nudge of Cami's shoulder to get her moving. She forced herself to focus on her breathing as she followed the doctor through the maze of hallways. He turned to her when they were at his door.

"He's stable, ma'am, and he's alive. He can hear you if you talk to him."

"Thank you," she said again, pushing open the door with shaking hands. As her eyes landed on him, she realized she probably should have taken an extra minute to absorb the fact that he'd been shot. He didn't look like Hotch. Tubes were everywhere, and though she was thankful it seemed like he could breathe on his own, it was still a lot to take in. She managed to pull the chair to his bedside before collapsing into it, wrapping both of her hands around his.

Then, and only then, did she really lose it.

Dream worlds, Hotch decided, were odd places. Colours were more vibrant here, things always a little foggy around the edges. But it was a happy place, devoid of the torture and grief he saw on a regular basis. He liked it here. He'd just been settling in for a long and, he knew, well deserved rest, when something permeated through the haze of happiness.

Someone was crying.

He'd wondered what the odd, weighted feeling on his hand had been, and now he knew. There was someone there with her. But he couldn't see anyone for miles around him. There was no one in this world with him, so where was the crying coming from? He listened closely, not that it took much effort. He'd heard that crying before, those gut wrenching sobs. He fought against the dream world's fog for the answer, pushing back in his brain…

Emily!

Emily was crying!

He pushed himself upright, or, at least, he tried to. Something held him down. He couldn't move. But he needed to get to her! He needed to understand why she was crying! Emily didn't cry without provocation, that was one thing he'd learned about his colleague in the last few years. Well, one of the things. He'd learned a lot more about her than just that.

But why was Emily crying?

The weight lifted from him and he got up. He was going to find out where she was and then he was going to figure out why she was crying. He sighed as he set off through the meadows of the dream land. The faster he found her, the faster he could comfort her and stop her crying. He didn't like seeing her cry and it was driving him crazy that he could hear it, but he couldn't find her.

He saw someone in the distance and picked up his pace. It took him a few steps before he realized it wasn't a woman – and his heart dropped a little at the thought that he was still looking for Emily – but a man, a man wearing a sweatshirt. The hood was up and though something told him that approaching the man was a bad idea, he had too much of his brain focused on finding Emily.

"Excuse me?"

He froze when the man turned around, a mask on his face and cold but triumphant eyes. He noticed the gun and his eyes widened. The gun came up, aimed right at him.

"You should have taken the deal."