A/N: Not too many chapters left! AHHHH

Chapter 30

I felt like I could finally breathe when Reid dropped me off at my apartment. Like the hands that I felt like wrapped around my neck were not longer choking me. I finally wasn't feeling smothered.

After I put my shit away, I pulled out the bottle of whiskey I had on a very high shelf. The whiskey that I kept for special occasions. Getting kidnapped and stabbed seemed like a good enough occasion to me. I didn't even have a glass. I just drank straight from the bottle.

It reminded me of my teenage days. Which was exactly what I was drinking to forget. I drank some more, hoping that the memories would just vanish.

I sat down on my couch. Emily Prentiss. Lauren Reynolds. Mary Brunner. And all the other names and aliases that I used that blend together now since I had been so many of them. So many identities. So many people I wanted to forget.

I drank to every person. I drank to my team. I drank to my parents. I drank to John. I drank to Sasha. I drank to all the lives I've saved and all the lives I had taken.

Sergio jumped onto the couch and he laid his head on my lap.

"Oh, Serg. When am I going to ruin your life?" I whispered as I pet his head. "You deserve a better human than me."

I drank some more. Until there wasn't a drop left.

JJ POV

It was hard to concentrate on work when all of our thoughts were on Emily. Our work ethic was already bad before Spence had come to the office after dropping her off. Him joining us just made it worse. All we wanted to do was ask about her.

"Okay," Hotch muttered. "We aren't working well at all. I know we are all worried about Prentiss. So let's talk about her so we can get it all out of our systems."

"How's she doing?" I asked Spencer.

He shrugged and put his nerdy bag on the table. "I can't really tell. Sometimes she's laughing and smiling and other times she stares off and looks like she's lost in her thoughts. It's hard to see what she is really feeling."

"I still can't believe the woman was cracking jokes after what happened to her," Pen commented. "Then again, we don't really know what happened to her. Did she tell you anything, Boy Wonder?"

He shook his head. "I don't believe that she wants any of us to know what happened to her. The drugs that were in her system… something happened that she doesn't want to remember."

"Do you think she'll be ready to come in for work tomorrow?" Hotch asked him, looking concerned.

"She probably needs to work," Spence admitted. "She's probably just sitting around thinking about things having nothing to do."

"Does Prentiss have any hobbies?" Derek asked us all. When we all shrugged, he grimaced. "Maybe you should have brought her here."

Rossi piped up for the first time, "She needs a break that isn't in a hospital. It's just a few hours. She'll be fine."

I wasn't so sure about that. There was a lot of self-destruction a person could do in a few hours. And I knew what that meant for Emily. Getting wasted.

"Maybe I should go and see how she's doing," I said quietly. They all turned to me, looking surprised. "I know how Emily deals with things," I admitted. "It's not healthy. I just want to make sure she's okay."

Hotch looked torn about letting me go. Eventually, he relented. "Okay," He told me. "If she's not doing alright, please let me know. She told me that she would refuse to go to a shrink, but I can make it mandatory."

I nodded and gathered my things.

I knocked on her door like I did so many times before. She wasn't answering, which was worrisome. I knocked some more, hoping that she just didn't hear or she was asleep. After a minute of loud knocking, I called her phone. She didn't pick up.

"Emily, goddammit, open the door!" When she didn't open the door or reply, I shouted, "Either open the door or I am going to kick down the door!"

After a few seconds, the door opened. I didn't know what to notice about her first. Her sunken eyes, her ghostly white complexion, the bottle of wine she was holding in her hand, the different variety of alcohols I smelled on her, or the utter lack of clothes she was wearing. I only had seen her a few days ago. I was sure that Spence would have said something about this…

"Emily…" I couldn't help but reach out and touch her face to make sure she was still alive, but she flinched away. "Em…"

"What d-do you want?" She slurred and blinked several times like she was on the brink of becoming unconscious.

The sight of her looking so defeated was jaw-dropping. Emily Prentiss always represented strength.

"Can I come inside?" I asked her, a little lost for words.

"I'm guessing you won't be taking no for an answer." She stepped to the side so I could come through.

I didn't know what I was expecting. I thought that there would be a mess. Like her apartment would represent how she was feeling. But it was as clean and unemotional as ever. The only thing that looked off was the number of empty bottles of alcohol on the coffee table.

"Did you have any food with those drinks?" I asked her as I sat down on her chair.

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. She sat down on her couch and chugged the bottle of wine. Her tank top rode up and I could see the stitches of her stab wound. She noticed where my eyes had traveled to and she pushed her shirt back down.

"I know you don't want me to ask you if you're okay, and I'm sure you wouldn't reply honestly, so I'm just going to ask what I can do for you."

She raised her eyebrows as if she was surprised I had asked such a question. "I'm out of whiskey, can you…"

"No," I told her simply. "In fact, give me the wine right now. It isn't going to make you feel any better." As I reached over to grab it from her, she pulled it close to her in a hug. I sighed, "Emily…"

"Don't c-come in here and tell me what I need to do! You w-weren't there! You don't know what I need!"

I stared at her. "Emily…"

"Stop saying my fucking name like that! I don't need help! And I r-really don't need your help."

I bit my lip. Emily didn't yell at me. She never really raised her voice at me. I did so many wrong things to her and she never even shouted. And now… It was scary. She didn't even seem like herself.

"So what do you need?"

She grumbled, "I n-need you to go. Leave! Stop pretending like you actually care…"

I got up and instead of leaving as she wanted, I sat down next to her. She tried to move away but I didn't let her. I put one hand on her thigh and with the other hand, I grabbed the wine out of her hold. She didn't even try to fight me. It was like her fight left her body.

I pushed the oily hair out of her face and whispered, "I know you're breaking. But you don't have to go through this alone. I'm here for you. I'm not going anywhere."

She stared at me with this blank expression. And then her lip quivered. And then she let out this sound that screamed desperation. Tears fell down her cheek. She was falling apart. But she was letting me catch her.

She laid her head on my thighs and I held her close. I brushed her hair with my fingers, trying to be as comforting as possible.

"I m-miss her," She admitted shakily. "She's a killer. She kidnapped and stabbed me. And I miss her. I'm so fucked up."

I shook my head. "No…" I told her. "No, you aren't fucked up. She loved you. You had a relationship with her. It's okay that you miss her. When you were together she was a good person."

"And then I left her and she went crazy. It's m-my fault all those people are dead. It's all my fault. So many people are dead because of me. Why couldn't it have been me?"

I furrowed my eyebrows, not understanding what she had meant by that. "What do you mean?"

"I shouldn't be here," She murmured as she let out another sob. "I don't want to be here. This doesn't even feel real."

Her words were scary. She almost sounded...

"But this is real. You are real. I am real. The work we do… that's real. You saving people… that's real." Her body started shaking. I didn't know what to do. What to say.

"I don't want any of it to be real. Because if it was real, then it really happened."

I didn't understand what she was saying. None of it made sense. "What really happened?"

She sighed, "E-everything." She pulled up her shirt, showing me her wound. "This should have gone all the way."

I didn't know how to reply to that dark comment. "It's going to get better," I told her. "I know you're hurting. I know that everything probably hurts right now, but you just have to trust me. It will all get better."

"I've been waiting for it to get better for thirty years," She said before sitting back down. "I thought that maybe… you could have made things better. You were so perfect. So pure and true. And then I tainted you. Just like I do with everything."

I didn't know what to say to that. I wanted to tell her that she didn't screw me up. That she made things so much better for me. That I loved who she was. That I was in love with her.

Instead of saying anything at all, I kissed her, trying to act on what I felt. But she didn't return the kiss. She backed off.

"I think it's time for you to go, now," She said, her eyes far away from mine. Like she was afraid to look at me. Before I could argue, she added, "Don't worry. I won't drink anymore. I'll see you at work, tomorrow."

"Em… I'm worried about you. I don't know if I should leave. You need help."

She shook her head. "I'm fine. I didn't mean to scare you. The alcohol makes me say crazy things." She even added a chuckle to try to sell the lie.

Of course, I didn't believe her. She might have sounded saner, but she was even more distant now than she was before.

"Please go," She stated firmly. "Reid's probably going to come over in a bit anyway. I'm fine here. Don't look at me like that. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

She practically pushed me out the door. I didn't want to leave, but she didn't give me a choice.

It hurt me to write this chapter. But it needed to be done.

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