Author's Notes: It hasn't taken me weeks to update for once. I should get awesome points for that, right? And thank you to everyone who has recently reviewed/alerted/favourited; you're helping me to see writing this as less of a chore. So please, continue doing so. :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

With the flick of an unsteady hand, the engine died. She used that same hand to remove the sweater that until that point, had remained in her lap, and with one last lingering moment, she exited the car on equally unsteady legs.

There was nothing special about the house as she approached, nothing unique or particularly foreboding. It was simply respectable, and cozy, and safe. It wasn't like she had expected some cliche scene from a horror movie; her job had taught her to expect the unexpected - that appearances were often deceiving, and that you never really could know just what goes on behind closed doors, however perfect said doors appear on the outside.

But behind this door, she knew exactly what was going on - what and who lay beyond it - and her nausea returned with a vengeance. What if JJ was already dead? Or worse.. Because in this scenario, death wouldn't necessarily be the worst outcome. And that thought triggered a million more inside of Emily's mind, each worse than the last and in that moment, she abandoned all protocol for these kinds of situations; everything that she had ever known and lived by and any fear for her own safety just vanished like it had never been there.

Without a second's hesitation, she walked straight into the house as it were her own, and the fact that the door was left unlocked didn't even register in her brain; she had expected as much. It was all so predictable and it pissed her off that she hadn't figured it out before it had gotten this far, before JJ's life was put in danger. The ending of this story, though, she didn't even want to predict. She had been right so far; she couldn't bare to even consider the possibility of being right about that, too.

The inside of the house didn't reflect the outside in the slightest. The homey feel was long gone and in it's place were coldly pristine, almost clinical, bare white walls and blank concrete floors that chilled her through and through. And it was so damn quiet. Too quiet, too perfect, and so completely eerie that goosebumps rose visibly against her skin.

Having wandered the whole first floor, she made her way through to the living room, noticing instantly the photographs on the mantelpiece. They were the only things inside the whole house that seemed even remotely personal. Though, that wasn't the only reason that she headed over to take a closer look; a part of her was curious. Of course she remembered what this woman looked like, even more so now that she was so abruptly a part of her life again, but she just needed to see.

There were three; each perfectly set apart from one another, all in the same size, style and colour frame. She didn't recognise the people accompanying her blast from the past in the first two; friends of hers, she assumed. Though, she did wonder briefly how such a clearly unhinged person could even find friends. She let out a humourless laugh at her thoughts and turned her attention to the third and final picture.

That, she did recognise, since she had taken it. Sarah had wanted her in the picture also, she remembered clearly, but photographs, physical memories, were meant for people with an intended future, and a future definitely wasn't something that she had been looking for on the night that they met. Or the following day. Or the weeks that passed that she just would not leave her alone.

Emily picked up the photo for a closer look, and as she did, she felt something wedged behind the frame. Flipping it around she pulled a small silver key from the tape that held it in place, and haphazardly replaced the photo frame back above the fireplace as the cogs in her mind began turning. She tossed the key up and down idly in her hand whilst she scanned the room, searching for the lock intended for it; about the size of a door key, causing her to eliminate the possibility of it fitting a small chest or cupboard, which didn't really narrow down her options all that much but it was something.

After checking each door on the lower level of the house, she headed upstairs. Again, she checked each door to each room, and each room for other doors, until she'd exhausted every possibility and frustration burned through her veins; she didn't have the time for this damn scavenger hunt.

Turning down the hall to head back to the stairs, she stopped in her tracks. She poked her head back around the door of the room that she had just exited and then did the same with the one previous. Something didn't fit, literally. The size of the rooms didn't remotely equal the distance that she had walked on the other side of the wall, even with the closet space in the first room taken into account.

She all but ran back to the closet and shoving the clothes aside, she found exactly what she had been looking for. It was like finding Narnia, except much less exciting and a lot more terrifying. She didn't particularly want to know what lay beyond this door. Her heart raced so fast that she could literally feel it and her mind matched it's pace with every gruesome possibility of what she was about to uncover. But as the lock clicked with a quick turn of the key, she allowed herself a second to prepare herself for the worst.

What she found, however, somehow hadn't been on her list of possibilities.

Her eyes widened as the room's contents flooded into her brain like a tsunami and overloaded all of her senses. It almost suffocated her; too much for her to take in. There wasn't an inch of the walls that weren't covered with.. her. Photographs that she never even remembered being taken, receipts from dinners that she had had with Sarah, simple everyday objects that she had thrown out months ago, and her scent. It becomes difficult for a person to recognise the smell of their own perfume after using it for so long, but the whole damn room was thick with it.

She couldn't help the vomit that spewed unexpectedly from her throat. She felt uneasy on her legs, and placed a hand on her stomach, the other on the wall to steady her. But as she dry heaved some more, she suddenly realised that hers wasn't the only hand pressed against her stomach and became then aware of the warm body behind her..

She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. All her instincts seemed to abandon her along with her ability to even begin to think rationally.

"I told you that you'd be back."

The cold words burnt against her neck and a blurred hand moved at an unrealistically slow pace towards her face, but she was powerless to stop it. So she watched it's journey, felt as it covered her mouth, and before she had the chance to even register what was happening, her world went black.