Growing

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

Sir Winston Churchill

***

IV

He's saying something, but I can't quite make out the words. I do comprehend the tone, though, and it isn't a pleasant one. He's trying to humiliate me, to break me.

'...your kind isn't fit to walk this planet.' He's repeating the same mantra, over and over again, yet he hasn't really said which bit he's so agitated about. Why me? This isn't one of those "Oh God, why did this ever happen to me?" shticks. This is profiling 101. If I know why, then I'll know a little more about him, about his motivations, how he got to this place. How I can beat him somehow.

Of course, bleeding to death makes things a little bit harder. I'm being cynical, you say?

No, really?

'...all the same, sleeping your way to the top.'

Excellent. Misogynist. How much more clichéd can this guy get? Doesn't he know about all those other guys that killed women because they hated their mothers? Doesn't he know how textbook this profile is?

No rape, so he's probably impotent. Most misogynists can't wait for the chance to really drive the message home. According to the reports, any penetration during torture had been the result of "non-penile origins," to put it bluntly. It's not something I'm particularly looking forward to, but then, I could have done without the majority of tonight's events. Some, though, I'll keep.

I can taste blood as his fist strikes my face again. He's personalising this. Prefers to be here, inflicting the pain, the violence. He could have locked me into some diabolical torture machine that would have been far more effective, but no. He likes to watch.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

So. Misogynist, impotent, sadist. What else?

Not particularly imposing, now that I can see him. He gets his power from fighting someone who can't fight back. He had the strength in him to strangle me into unconsciousness, sure, but I think – I hope – that was because I had been distracted. Trapped in my own little world.

That's compartmentalization for you.

I wonder what my life would be like if I had grown up with a different mentality, a different family, maybe. Would I still be this over-bearing cynic who couldn't express a real emotion if she tried?

He grabs my chin, directs my face upward so my eyes lock with his. Rossi and I had interviewed this man earlier today. He had shown no sign of this malice, this hatred.

'Do you feel so powerful now?' he asks me. I keep his gaze. He isn't expecting that. He's expecting me to cower in fear, like the cowardly woman I'm supposed to be. I make a noise of contempt before I even realize that I'm doing it.

Great job, Emily. Now he's going to take even more pleasure in making you scream.

He looks at me with those distant eyes of his, as though he was somehow expecting this. Expecting that I wouldn't conform to his ideas. That I wouldn't willingly play the victim. For someone who's not playing the victim, I sure as hell feel like I'm playing the victim.

I feel the pain before I comprehend what his is doing. I feel the nerve endings burn as the message is passed on by the receptors. Feel the screaming sensation of fire against my skin. And then, I feel nothing.

***

They're going over what they know for the hundredth time at least. They know that seven women have been kidnapped, tortured and murdered. They know that Emily is missing. They know that it is likely they have already met the unsub. They know they have, at maximum, three days before they find another corpse. They know that the torture has probably already started.

Everyone seems to be in a rather melancholy mood, and it isn't surprising. They've all got contingency plans in case something like this happens to them; in case they are kidnapped, killed in action, broken beyond repair. Instructions on what to tell their families, their friends. Emily's relatives are limited to a mother who is rarely ever in the same country as her, and a daughter that isn't yet old enough to understand the concept of death.

Hotch knows that if a phone call is to be made, then he will have to be the one to make it. JJ knows that she will be the one to tell a two-year-old girl that her mommy won't be coming home. Though they are both strong people, just the thought of doing this almost tears them apart. They need to find her.

They've been through situations like this before. They are so similar, yet so different. It feels the same as the time Reid went missing in Georgia, or the time he and Emily were in a cult compound in Colorado, yet it feels different this time, because they have no idea just what state she is in. Whether or not she will survive the torture that this unsub throws at her.

But they will persevere.

Because that's what you do for family.