I'm very proud of this chapter, just the fact that I was able to write it and I hope that it will make sense to you and that you'll like it. It's very dark, more so than anything else I think I've ever written. J.J. may be a little out of character, but I thought it was something that would fit for this story...

It may take me a little longer to update now, because this is the last chapter that I have completely written, but I usually find some class at school everyday that I can work on it in.

So anyway, I'll shut up now and let you read it! lol Please tell me what you think...

From Darkness to Light

A CM fanfic

Chapter 6

J.J. woke up, finding herself on the bathroom floor of her hotel room. Too many questions were flooding her mind as she attempted to hold onto the counter and pull herself up. How did I get here was the first thought to register in her brain and when she finally looked in the mirror everything came back.

Staring back at her from the other side of the glass was a person J.J. barely recognized. Her blonde hair was disheveled and her make-up smudged, but the one thing that instantly jogged her memory was the red, the blood that was all over her white shirt and was trickling down her left arm.

Once Detective Bowman had driven the team into Springfield they had split up with J.J. and Hotch going to the morgue to see the body and talk to the parents while Morgan, Reid, and Emily went to the dump sites of the victims. Seeing pictures of the girls was one thing, but actually seeing what remained of the last little girl was something entirely different and it nearly made J.J. sick. Justine's small body had been ripped apart, her clothes blood stained and her long blonde hair, which the young girl had been so proud of was matted with dirt and blood, going out in all directions, but it wasn't just the victims J.J. couldn't get out of her head. It was the parents too. She and Hotch had talked to all of them that day and by the end she couldn't take it anymore. Some of them couldn't stop crying, mourning the loss of their child. Others were quiet or speechless. Each picked someone different to blame for what had happened, either themselves, their spouse, the world in general, or Hotch and J.J., the FBI for not catching the guy before he got to their child.

It had been a tough day and at the end they had all decided to go out somewhere to eat, to forget the horrors they'd seen throughout the day if only for a few hours, but Jennifer Jareau hadn't joined them. She instead had gone back to the hotel, to the safety of her own room, claiming that she didn't feel good and just wanted to get to bed early. But sleep, she knew, was something that did not come easily anymore so she just walked in the room and sat on the bed, thinking about the girls, the parents, what had happened to them and eventually she let her mind wander to what could have happened to her that night in Georgia.

What if I hadn't been able to fight off the dogs? What if Tobias had taken me instead of Reid? What if he'd taken me in addition to Reid? What if Reid hadn't survived? What if we'd gotten there just a little too late? Why didn't I follow him around the barn? Why did I let him decide to split up? If things had been different would I have ended up like those girls in the pictures from this case? Would Reid have ended up like them? And finally J.J. realized that she knew how they must have felt. She understood their fear and pain and she didn't want to. She wanted to forget what had happened. She wanted her life back and she wanted to feel like a normal person again, not someone damaged by nightmares, fear, and guilt.

J.J. got up slowly and walked over to her bag. With a shaking hand she opened it and took out a pocket knife. She couldn't explain why she had brought it with her, hell, she didn't even know why she had it in the first place, but what mattered then was that she did have it. J.J. took the knife into the bathroom and sat on the floor. She opened the knife and stared at it for a long time before finally running her fingers over the blade, feeling that it was there. She knew it was a bad idea, but it seemed to be calling her and happy that she had taken off her jacket when she came into the room leaving her with her white, short-sleeved shirt she'd been wearing throughout the day she took the knife and pressed the blade against her left arm, watching as small beads of blood formed around it. She made one cut, then another, careful to just go deep enough to bleed, just deep enough to feel the pain. And for the first time in a long time Jennifer Jareau forgot about barking dogs, old barns, and dead children.