Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds
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Hotch got into the SUV and put his head to the steering wheel. His anger boiled over the instance he left the building. Before entering the room, or getting the phone call, Hotch had read what they had of the file so far. Mainly photo's, he subjected himself to look. The mass bruising to Penelope was horrific, there were copies of the hospital scans, the CT scans showing the bleed on the her brain, the MRI images of the tears she had internally, each circled by the doctors who had initially attended, there were the scans of Penelope's lungs, X rays of her ribs. He kept telling himself it was all for evidence but he looked at it as his team member laid out and exposed. He then looked at the photo's that the nurses had taken when Penelope was first admitted. Her ribs, protruding out how they shouldn't have been, the cuts that ran down her back, her spine evidently shown as her body had sunken from starvation, there were photos of her legs with the burns and cuts and bruises.
As he looked, the more he realised she was a mass of bruising and that would result in a tender recovery, let alone the ribs that weren't broken being bruised. Plus whatever the doctors had had to repair within. He thought's went back to Penelope in the bed, hooked up to a machine to show her heart beat whenever it went irregular, oxygen on standby, the IV in her hand, the IV in her chest, the feeding tube in her stomach. And then his thoughts would fly into the words of Antonio. 'Betrayal doesn't go unpunished.' With those words he sat up, this was no time to break down, he started the car and headed to the hospital, he would spend the night there and then head back to Quantico in the morning. For now, he wanted to be in one place and nowhere else.
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When he arrived he was shocked to find just Derek in the room with Penelope. He noticed Derek just was completely lost in thought, hand to his lips, other hand in Penelope's, eyes fully diverted to Penelope as she slept.
'Morgan?' No response was given; Hotch then noticed the wet line on his team members face. 'Derek?'
'Uh... oh.' Derek wiped his face. 'Sorry, man, everything okay?' He asked confused.
'Oh yeah, I'm not needed back for another day so I'm going to camp out until the morning and leave.'
'What happened?'
'I'm going to give you one line that seems prominent to Antonio, betrayal doesn't go unpunished.' He saw Derek's eyes. 'Exactly... apparently they were brought up to believe it, ever a lie, resulted in a beating... Penelope was apparently the only one not to follow that.'
'Did she ever get beaten?' Hotch nodded. 'Christ... what else did he say?'
'He said the best part was strangling her, the look in her eyes as she realised the air was running out, then he would slam her into the wall... a little lighter fun as well... just sick... he had no remorse.'
'Well he wouldn't would he? I mean the way he walked in here that day, like Penelope wouldn't turn her back on him.' He noticed Hotch staring. 'What else Hotch?'
'It's just the case file to go with it, they refuse to get a statement of Penelope just yet, but I think maybe one of us getting it would be better.' Derek nodded slightly unsure whether or not Penelope would want that. 'Other than that they have photos upon photos of Penelope's injuries, and copies of the scans and x-rays, the medical reports from the operations and stuff like that.' Hotch then looked at Derek. 'He had a massive cut on his head as well.'
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Later that day when she lay awake absorbing the conversation, she was in and out of it for awhile, praising the drugs for paralysing the pains, hating them for making her so dosed up and sleepy. She had awoken to just Hotch and Derek, and was thrown into immediate confusion of her boss' presence; when she was sure he was suppose to be back in Quantico. She smiled when he said he wasn't needed back until the morning so he thought he would spend the time wisely with a certain blonde tech of his.
'I bet he told you about my stepfathers rule right?'
'Penelope... we don't need to do this.'
'We do.' She said with a new found strength. 'I need to do this.' She looked at them both. 'I NEED to do this to get rid of it.'
They knew that the 'it' meant images of the past 4 months. Hotch sighed. 'Yes he did. He also said how you never followed it...'
'I refused to hit them because they did what teenagers do best... it wasn't my rule, I wasn't going to reinforce it on any of them.'
'He told me he recited it over the last 4 months, how you needed to be taught.' She nodded and closed her eyes again. 'Penelope we really don't need to do this.'
'We do.' She repeated like earlier. 'You need a statement... I need to give it.'
'But baby girl, when you're better.'
'Handsome as much as I love you, I need to do this to keep my grip on sanity... and right now, you two are the only people I want to do this with.'
Hotch sat forward in his chair, Derek moved closer, took Penelope's hand, kissed it and flashed her a smile. 'Okay, so what happened the night he took you?'
'I had just seen Kevin, I ended it... he was fine, I needed to get something from my place before going to Derek's... When I got out of my car, I had this really bad feeling so I was going to get back into Esther and just go to Derek's but before I could someone grabbed me from behind... he put his hand over my mouth so I couldn't scream. I dropped my purse and keys and felt something get injected into my arm then everything went black.'
Hotch nodded. 'How about when you woke up?'
'I had a headache and all I could smell was dampness. I still had my glasses on which I felt was really odd, then the light came on and Antonio walked down the steps.'
'What did he do?'
'He grabbed my hair and pulled me from the bed, telling me I was a betraying bitch, that I should never have walked out on the family, it was like when I was 18 and he was passing the blame again.' She then breathed in a breath that they were all used to hearing, shaky and still sticky to its sound.
'Did he drug you anymore?' She shook her head. 'What was the first thing he did?'
'He started to just beat me, regularly, like daily and he used to make me watch the news, about me. It was always the same thing but then I don't know like a month ago he decided to step everything up an notch.'
'How do you mean?'
'He started to use the lighter, or a knife, and then he decided the baseball... bat.' Now the tears started to build up.
'Hey baby girl... you're doing great.'
'Yeah Penelope, once you've done this, I can write it, give it and you're done.' Hotch said worrying about the emerging breakdown occurring. 'He told me about when he strangled you... and he also said about what he did with the bat.' Penelope nodded as the tears spilt and Derek reached in and wiped them. 'We have that on tape so you don't need to repeat it okay?'
'Yeah.' She said with a crackling voice.
'And Derek's told me about how you got out, so I'll write it down and when you can, you just sign it and we can put it away.' Penelope just nodded again, not really knowing what to say at that moment in time. 'He's not going to get away lightly Penelope, the detective that wanted to question him after me was literally sieving, plus the officer that checked his head for where you hit him didn't go to lightly either. Prison won't agree with him at all.'
'I guess as much when Derek told me you were going down there... but I can bet he doesn't feel bad does he?' Hotch just shook his head. 'I guessed not... he was never a remorseful one.'