There was something to be said about the injustice of the unsub dying before his day in court. They had no doubt that there was some serious delusions in Bernard Dell’s head, but each and every person involved in the case wanted to see the man tarred and feathered in a court of law. JJ was going to have a few nasty bruises, but other than that she was going to be perfectly fine. Aaron had accumulated a few of his own black and blue spots from the edges of the large stairs, but he too would live to fight another day. Of course, that was barring Emily killing him right there and then.
They made their way back to the hotel in silence and in 2 cars. Emily drove while JJ and Reid cuddled in the back seat. Derek drove the other SUV with Penelope, Morrow and Hotch. It didn’t surprise Derek that Emily had chosen to ride in a separate car. This had been one of those times where asses had been on the line and not in the general sense. Something could have seriously happened to Hotch out there, something that could have been fatal and even Derek knew that Emily would have been devastated to lose him right when she’d found him.
What worried him was how she was going to handle the whole situation to begin with. As Emily’s best friend and surrogate brother, the woman had slowly become an open book to him. Her reaction to the lack of eyes on Hotch came as no surprise. Her reaction afterwards did. In fact, he’d been a little impressed she’d been able to hold back at all, let alone enough to keep pace with him, at least until the very end.
He’d never underestimate Emily’s abilities again. Not if she could focus on the case first and Hotch last. Sure, she hadn’t checked on JJ, but the woman wasn’t perfect. She was bound to make mistakes every once in a while. And this, Derek realized as he thought about it, really wasn’t a mistake. Emily had simply picked her battles, ordered her priorities and Derek knew that if it had been Penelope on the line like Hotch had been, she would be his first worry.
Derek froze. Where the hell had that come from?
You know exactly where that came from Derek Morgan.
Why on earth did his internal voice have to sound like his mother? It doesn’t matter.
Why not? You’ve been in love with this girl since you met her. She’s everything to you.
Even so, I won’t be responsible for spoiling her.
His inner self scoffed. Please. You’re not the fatalistic type. And look at the rest of the team, all paired off and happy. They can make it work, why can’t you?
I’d break her heart. He chanced a glance at the blond on his mind in the rear-view mirror. She was untainted, with the exception of her ordeal with Battle and he wasn’t about to add more fuel to that fire. As if sensing his gaze, she looked up, locking her eyes on his and giving him a somewhat bright smile. His heart flip-flopped.
You’re so far gone it’s terrible, his inner voice argued. We all know it.
Derek pulled smoothly into the parking lot of the hotel, watching Reid help JJ out of the back of the other car. Emily was already striding purposefully away, ignoring the rest of her team. Derek glanced over at Hotch, noticing the man’s stiff movements as he climbed out of the vehicle. Oh how part of him wished to be a fly on the wall for that particular confrontation.
He knew she’d stopped to stand beside him, even before he looked to his left to see her cocking her head in curiosity.
“You going to stay in there all night?”
Her eyes were haunted, a prospect that churned his insides. The last thing she wanted was for her to be uncomfortable. He knew it had everything to do with how close of a call not only JJ but Hotch had had that day and he wasn’t sure there was anything he could do to make her feel better. He climbed out of the SUV, unsurprised when she linked arms with him.
“You look a million miles away,” Penelope said softly as they wandered towards the hotel. The rest of the team was way ahead of them, but that didn’t seem to faze her one bit. She understood that they all had their own way of dealing with these situations and that, especially in this case, there were issues within the team to be resolved.
“We could have lost either one of them today,” he replied slowly, not looking at her. He didn’t open up often, and rarely to her about cases. She saw enough without having to deal with his baggage too. Usually these kind of talks were reserved for Emily, for his best friend. He glanced over when he felt her arm tighten marginally around his arm.
“But we didn’t.”
Her eyes were still shadowed and he knew that despite her bravado, she was thinking exactly the same thing. “Come on, Sweetness. Let’s get something to eat.” He shifted to wrap his arm around her shoulders as they made their way into the hotel, trying to ignore the way she snuggled in close.
JJ sat by the window of the hotel room she now shared with Spencer, just watching the wind rustle the leaves in the trees. She wasn’t sure how to react to the day’s events, wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be upset, angry, frustrated, scared… or all of the above.
Her head was pounding a little bit, the drugs the EMT gave her wearing off. She was going to have a gorgeous bruise on the side of her head, but there were no lasting physical injuries. Even the bruises on her neck would heal in time. She sighed, her hand coming up to stroke the red irritation around her throat. She could vividly remember the feeling of Bernard Dell’s arm pushing against her windpipe, vividly remember the feeling of the metal gun barrel pressed against her blond hair. She’d clung to Spencer in the aftermath, through the ride home, even while the EMT checked her for any serious injuries.
She hadn’t even heard the gunshot, but the news had floated her way. Bernard Dell was dead and if the gun had been rotated 90 degrees before going off, it would have been Hotch. She preferred to focus on the latter, to think about someone else’s injuries. That way, she didn’t have to think about how precariously close she’d come to dying.
JJ glanced up as Emily took a seat in front of her. Her friend looked a little worse for wear, lines showing around the corners of her eyes and mouth. JJ could tell she didn’t want to be alone, but she wasn’t calm enough to have a rational conversation with the one person JJ knew she wanted to go to. She allowed Emily to take her hand, squeezing reassuringly.
“How are you holding up?”
“No permanent damage,” JJ replied, managing a small smile.
“I know.”
“How are you?”
Emily sighed, turning her head to follow JJ’s gaze out the window. “Angry, frustrated, upset, scared.”
“Me too.” It didn’t come as a surprise that Emily’s first emotion was anger. Whether it was at herself, at Hotch, at JJ….
“We should have known better. We should have had people behind you,” Emily lamented, running a hand over her head, pulling her ponytail over her shoulder.
“We didn’t know,” JJ answered, though Emily had pegged some of JJ’s own anger and frustration. They’d been so careful for so long. The one time they slipped up, the one time they trusted that nothing would go wrong, something did.
And JJ or Hotch could have been dead because of it.
“Have you talked to Hotch?” JJ asked quietly.
Emily smiled ironically. “I’m afraid I’ll castrate him,” she admitted. “I’m so angry at him.”
“It’s his job, you know.”
“I do,” Emily agreed on a sigh. “That doesn’t mean I’m not angry.”
“You’ve seen him throw himself into dangerous situations before. You’ve seen him go into situations without a weapon,” JJ pointed out, thankful for something other than herself to focus on.
“I’ve heard about him almost taking on a seasoned killer,” Emily responded. Her hand released JJ’s so she could wipe both over her face. “He could have died. I don’t know what I would have done if the man I…”
JJ smiled at the way Emily had trailed off. Her feelings for Hotch were obvious, but it seemed like Emily hadn’t explored them as deep as they were visible. “If the man you love had died right in front of you.”
“Yeah,” Emily agreed, her voice choking. “I love him.”
“I know,” JJ said.
There was silence for a moment as JJ let Emily absorb this new revelation.
“I’m still angry.”
JJ let out a bark of laughter. “Tell Hotch to hide the sharp objects.”
Both women shared a chuckle. Emily reached out and took JJ’s hand again. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she said quietly. “Really glad.”
“So am I,” JJ agreed.
“Are you going to be okay by yourself? I hear Reid went off to hunt down dinner.”
JJ smiled affectionately. “He wasn’t sure I wanted to go out. He made the decision all by himself.”
“Don’t lie, you’re thankful,” Emily said, pushing herself to a standing position. “Have you seen Derek or Pen?”
JJ raised an eyebrow. She hadn’t even realized they hadn’t come up. “No.”
“Huh,” Emily said, a note of something slipping into her voice. “I think I’m going to take my stuff with me.”
“You think Morgan pulled his head out of his butt?”
Emily grinned as she walked into the other room, calling back over her shoulder, “Isn’t it worth hoping for?”
Aaron was scared. Well, not scared per se, now that he thought about it, just horribly anxious. He’d never seen Emily that annoyed with anyone, well, him aside. He wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. He’d done what he knew Emily would have had she been in his position and she had to know that. He took a deep breath as the knock sounded on his door. He let it out when he saw Emily on the other side, ready bag in hand.
“I’m still upset with you,” she said as she brushed by.
Aaron watched her drop her bag beside his, brow wrinkling in confusion. “Okay.”
“What on earth were you thinking!?” she exploded, rounding on him. “You threw yourself at a man with a gun!”
“I had an opportunity and I took it,” he argued quietly, surprised at his own calm demeanour.
“And you were almost shot!”
He had to admit that Haley had her advantages over Emily in this particular area. Haley didn’t want to know what kind of dangerous situations Aaron got into on a daily basis. Emily knew them from the get go, knew what the danger was before they even went into a situation.
She sighed. “What if that shot had hit you instead of Dell?”
Aaron approached her slowly. “I was wearing Kevlar.”
“That doesn’t make you invincible,” she burst out. She swiped at her eyes, feeling moisture pool and overflow in the corners.
She hadn’t stopped his approach. Aaron took it as a good sign.
“Why didn’t you shoot him?” she asked, voice cracking.
He searched his mind for the last time he’d seen her lose control like this. She, like him, prided herself on her ability to keep perfect control of her emotions during a case. As such, the only time he could remember seeing this kind of fear or panic in her eyes was during her stay at his house, when she was still having nightmares. “It didn’t even cross my mind,” he admitted quietly, his hand coming up to cup her cheek, thumb brushing at the tears she’d missed.
Emily hit his chest half-heartedly. Her eyes darted down. “I saw you running at him… I just…” She sniffled, not used to being weak, trying to get control of herself again. “Then the gunshot… I have no idea how I held back enough not to just rush over and see if you were okay.”
“You’re strong.”
She pulled away a step. That wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear. “You give me too much credit.”
Her withdrawal scared him a tough. “You are.”
“You have no idea what it was like to imagine that you could be dead.” She let out a sarcastic and watery chuckle. “No idea.”
“You would have done the same thing,” he pointed out gently, reaching for her again.
“And how would you feel in my situation?” She was mentally scolding herself for losing her cool. She thought that her little talk with JJ had done something for her volatile emotions, but the rollercoaster had begun again during the ten feet between his bedroom and what had been hers. She’d realized that there had been a chance she could have been making the walk for a completely different reason.
Emily sniffled again. “I know it’s your job,” she began softly. “I know that if I had been in your shoes I probably would have made the same decision.”
He swept her into his arms, feeling her hands fist into his dress shirt. “I’m sorry,” he said as she broke down, her body shaking with silent sobs. He continued to hold her until her crying ceased, then kissed the top of her head, feeling her mumbled something against his chest. “What was that?”
“I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d lost you today,” she repeated, raising her chin. “You mean a hell of a lot to me, Aaron Hotchner.”
Aaron looked down at her, a sense of calm washing over him. He wanted to return the sentiment, but she seemed lost in her own world
“And maybe that’s what all of this comes down to, my entire reaction. I know it’s selfish, especially since you have a fantastic son, but out of this… All I could think about was ‘what if it had been Aaron that was shot instead of Dell? What would I have done if I’d lost the man I love?’”
That caught and held his attention better than anything else could have. It took a minute for the words to sink in. When he focused on her again, her face was complete and utter surprise. “Say it again.”
Comfort washed over her at the desperation that tinged his voice. A smile blossomed across Emily’s face as she met his eyes, fully focusing on him. “I love you.”
Aaron barely let her get the words out before he was fusing his mouth to hers. He hadn’t really expected to hear the words if only because they still hadn’t touched on their jobs or taking their relationship any further than it was. He hauled her against him, drinking in her shape, the feel of her, suddenly realizing that he could have lost this. This incredible, fantastic, gorgeous woman that had discovered more about him in the last eighteen months since her injury than Haley had probably known in the twenty years they’d been married. He hadn’t thought about it from her perspective, hadn’t considered anything past the point of saving JJ and preserving his family.
Emily fisted her hands in his hair as joy flooded her system, effectively wiping out any of the fear or anguish she’d been feeling. She felt lighter, though she hadn’t gotten more of a response than the enthusiastic one he was showing now. She wrapped her arms around him tightly when he pulled away, burying his face in her neck.
“I love you, too,” he mumbled into the skin.