Disclaimer: See last chapter
JJ opened her eyes and looked around her, she had no idea where she was. This was all too white, too clean to be with them again. They couldn't have got caught, she thought. She shook her head and tried to sit up, wanting to leave there as soon as possible.
They had killed Emily and Garcia,
They were going to hurt her again.
She was going to die.
She felt tears run down her face and then a hand touched her shoulder, she screamed loudly and turned around, afraid of who and what she could see. She shook her head and moved back a little, not sure how to react. She looked around, properly this time, looking down at her arms, all of the tubes and bandages. She looked down at her legs and frowned at the plaster on one of them, she closed her eyes for a moment, just trying to listen to everyone in the room breathe. She was alive and...
"Emily?" She looked back up at the person next to her and he smiled, she noticed he didn't take another step towards her, obviously waiting for JJ to ask him to hold her until he made another move for her.
"She is fine, she is in the next room. She's with Morgan." JJ nodded and then looked over at a sleeping Kevin,
"Does he know?" She whispered, he nodded and looked over at the man as well,
"He is finding it hard but he is glad that you're okay." JJ nodded,
"Where is my mum and dad?" Just as she asked they both walked through the door, she tried to sit up but the man next to her finally took a step and held onto her shoulder, she flinched a little but didn't move away from his touch this time.
"Don't try to move, you have a broken leg and a few broken ribs, try and relax please." She gulped, suddenly confused, wondering how she did it.
"Emily doesn't know how it happened either, she said you were both running and you collapsed in pain. You must have done it a few weeks before, I don't know how you managed to walk, let alone run, but somehow you did. The doctors think that that the running may have caused the actual break but there was some damage done before that." JJ looked down at her hands, not saying a word about it because she had no idea when they had managed that.
"I am so sorry we couldn't find you sooner." Reid blurted out randomly, the man next to JJ looked at him and shook his head, JJ's dad noticed the man's hand on his daughters shoulder and glared at him, not making a move to go near his own daughter. The man quickly took it off and looked down at the floor.
"They never should have touched you." Her dad finally said, shaking his head as his fists clenched, he looked down at the floor and tried to hold back the tears she knew he must have been holding back for a while now. She looked up at him, knowing what he was going on about but not wanting to say a word about it.
"We are going to help you through this." Reid said,
"Just like you helped me." He smiled, JJ nodded and then looked over at Kevin, he was still fast asleep, his dreams probably filled with Garcia when she was still alive. She shook the thoughts off and then looked over at the man standing next to her, at least he still had her and she had him.
"Aaron?" He looked over at her and tried to smile,
"Do you hate me?" She looked away, nervous of the answer, she thought about everything that had happened, why should he still love her? Why should he stay with her after everything that had happened?
"I never could, I love you more than anything."
"But... I-I let them do stuff to me, I let them..." She felt a tear trickle down her face as she looked down at the blanket,
"A-and you won't touch me.. so I thought..." She carried on, despite the tears now falling freely down her face, Hotch shook his head and walked up to her,
"I didn't want to touch you because I thought you would be scared of us, I didn't want to make you uncomfortable. Do you want me to hold you?" He said kindly, so unsure of himself for the first time since she had known him, so quiet. She lightly nodded her head and then looked at him, he smiled as he slowly wrapped his arms around her body. She felt the sudden warmth of his body and all her fear went away, finally relaxing into his arms, she looked at her dad and took his hand when he looked away.
"I am so sorry that I couldn't be there for you." Hotch whispered,
"It's not your fault." Hotch just nodded, she knew he didn't believe her but she didn't say anything else about it. His arms tightened around her and she leaned into his chest, smiling a little,
"Is Emily okay?"
"She broke her arm and she dislocated her knee but they managed to put it back in place. She was in shock when she was found but she is doing well now."
"How long ago did we get here?" She hesitated a little, not sure if she wanted to know,
"About two weeks, don't you remember?" She looked up at him, confused,
"Remember what?"
"You have woken up a few times, screaming whenever anyone came near you, crying so hard.. you were in so much pain. They kept you sedated because they thought it was for the best."
"Oh... so that's why none of you would come near me." It was more of a statement than a question but everyone in the room nodded anyway.
"I didn't want them to sedate you again, but you seemed a little better this time."
"I don't remember ever waking up, everything had just been black for a while now. The last think I remember is running down a hill and then nothing..."
"Emily carried on you, you have both been there for so long that you were light enough for her to carry even with a broken arm." Hotch bit down on his lip,
"How long?"
"What?"
"How long was I there...with them?"
"Six months." She looked up and shook her head,
"It didn't seem like that long though..." He nodded and then her dad squeezed her hand gently,
"We looked everywhere, we had a profile sorted and then two weeks ago we finally got the phone call from the hospital that we had been waiting for. Emily had taken you to a local police station, it wasn't far from the house and you were at the hospital. You were a four hour drive from us, we should have looked better... we should have been able to know." Tears ran down Hotch's face as he spoke, she had been gone for so long, he had missed her so much.
"I looked everywhere for you, in the end we were told that we had to deal with other cases but we never stopped looking. There was no trace of you at all, we knew that you had been walking home because your car broke down and we knew that Emily and Garcia were going to your house to check there but there was nothing else."
"They knew what they were doing then... do you know what they wanted?"
"There was nothing, no ransom calls, no clues, nothing. They must have seen the three of you and decided they wanted you all. You weren't the first ones but you're the last." She frowned a little at the anger in his voice and sighed,
"How do we know they won't do it again?"
"There was a massive raid on the house, they had guns all over the place and they threatened us with them, we shot them, all six of them." JJ closed her eyes for a moment, six? She could only remember three men and one woman, she wrinkled her nose and put her hands on her stomach, remembering the gun shot wound for a moment.
"It was infected, they had to stitch it up and operate on it to get the bullet out. It's going to leave a scar..."
"It was the woman." Hotch looked surprised for a moment, but he soon recovered,
"Four men and two women. They had both been kidnapped, one of them was taken ten years ago and the other twenty years ago. They were both sixteen when they were taken, both of them stopped trying to run after a while. They had brainwashed them into thinking they belonged there with them, they thought that they were safe.. that they were in love." Reid sighed as he explained everything, obviously thinking the same as everyone else in the room, it could have been JJ or Emily, or Garcia.
Garcia... JJ sobbed when she pictured the erratic best friend, wrapping her arms around Hotch as she thought about it.
"I wasn't there when they killed her, I didn't know they were going to and it's all my fault. I made them angry, it's all my fault. I thought they were going to kill me, I didn't know they were going to kill her for my mistake. I am so sorry." She cried as hard as she could, harder than she had ever cried before, Garcia was gone and she had no idea how to cope with it,
"They would have killed her anyway, it wasn't your fault. It could have been any of you."
"Why did they save me though?" She whispered,
"I asked them to let me die, I tried to get their hands off me so I could die. I was bleeding so much and they saved me, so why did they kill her when they could have just let me die?"
"You wanted to die?" Her mum finally spoke up, her face going impossibly paler than before,
"I thought we would never get out of there, I had given up..." She tried to explain but she trailed off, gripping onto Hotch as tight as she could.
"They liked to see people in pain, maybe when they saw that you had wanted to die then they wanted to make sure you lived – it would hurt you more."
"So if I had just lay there, not saying anything, not doing anything... they would have let me die and Garcia live?" Reid shook his head, watching as Kevin finally woke up and walked over to them.
"Garcia wouldn't have wanted you to blame yourself, they were going to kill one of you, if not all of you. It was going to happen whether you fought back or not." JJ tried to nod but everything hurt too much to even move,
"She wouldn't have wanted us to be unhappy, she would have wanted us to remember her before all of it happened."
"Whenever I try to picture her all I can see if her when we were there, she was in so much pain, she was so scared. I can't remember anything else..."
"It will come, I let my imagination go wild when I first heard about... but it's getting easier to remember her when she was alive and happy. It makes it a little easier." JJ nodded at him, whispering a thank you and then turning her head,
"I am going to get a doctor..." Her mum walked over to her and wiped away the tears that had fallen down JJ's face, smiling down at her daughter before taking her husband's hand and nearly running out of the door.
"I just want to forget everything that happened..." She whispered mostly to herself, Hotch unwrapped his arms from around her, taking her hand in his and smiling,
"Sometimes when bad things happen it makes you who you are. I am not saying that you're going to look back on this and think it was a good thing, that will never come, but you will look back on this and realize how much of a stronger person it made you..." JJ shook her head,
"I am not strong."
"You're one of the strongest people I know and you're going to get past this one day. You can do this, I believe in you and so does everyone else.
"I wish I could believe in me."
"You will one day..." JJ nodded and then sighed as she put her head on the pillow and closed her eyes, she could hear Hotch mutter something to Reid or Kevin and then her world went black again. Maybe everything would be okay. Maybe she could get past it with Emily.
Maybe...
~ The End ~