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The moment his question of “Prentiss, do you copy?” goes unanswered, Hotch knows what she plans to do and sets off running.
For all her understandable misgivings with organized religion, she’s a martyr through and through, right up there with Saint Joan of Arc and Saint Agnes of Rome. It’s a fact of her that seems at odds with her intermittent-yet-still-profilable impulse to play god, but really, they’re one and the same. Emily doesn’t have delusions of grandeur; no, she just needs control over the situation, over herself, and sometimes what that looks like is giving and giving and giving until there is nothing left to give but her own life, the ultimate offering.
He runs faster.
Will sees him first. “Hotch, get her out of here!” he bellows, and even though Emily has been expecting him, even though she could hear the slam of his footsteps on the marble and the shouts of her name getting closer and closer, she still screams when he grabs her around the waist and wrests her away, defeat, anger, and despair rolled into a single sound.
She fights him of course, always fighting for everyone but herself. Her nails scrabble against his skin as she tries to break free from his grasp—she’s so close, just one code away, she just needs more time, certainly more than the forty-seven seconds remaining but she has to try something, otherwise how can she look JJ in the eye?—but he’s stronger, and she soon has no choice but to match his stride as he urges them away and down the stairs, faster, I’m sorry, faster.
There’s a moment right before the explosion where she thinks it has already happened because the wind is knocked out of her. But it’s Hotch tackling her to the ground with his arms locked tightly around her, both to cushion her landing and to shield her from the blast with the full weight of his body.
Then the bomb detonates, and the sound is like the world cracking open, continents rearranging with a primordial scream.
Despite their unwillingness to go in the first place, they’re dutifully still at the hospital as medical staff position them like puppets for X-rays and CT scans. Their minds are far from stationary, though, the same images playing behind their eyelids with each blink: Will with block numbers burnt into his chest, 00:47, 00:46. Emily’s hair, mottled with soot and ash. Hotch’s eyes, wide with concern then recognition as he pulled back to peer down at her, the last of the debris settling around them.
He caves first, tugging his IV free the moment the nurse has finished detailing the new damage to his bad ear and seeking Emily out on stiff and aching legs.
There is much he could say to her. The 1 TRY LEFT blinking on the display when he’d run up meant she’d been reckless, shirking protocol and guessing at the code without knowing she’d have more than a single chance. What if it had blown at her mere proximity, or the interference from her comms, or the movement of Will’s body when she’d removed the duct tape from his lips? And even if she had deduced the correct code—with six transmitters, who’s to say that some other redundancy wouldn’t have simply sprung up in its place?
Emily would have known all this. Yet she’d still been ready to stay, ready to give her life out of love a second time.
It’s admirable until it isn’t, and something desperate claws up his throat in response. But when he finally lays eyes on her, any reprimands die instantly on his tongue.
She’s tiny in her hospital bed, a terrible echo of Bethesda. Her stare is hard, though, and the combination of porcelain and steel that is so uniquely Emily fills him with so much affection for her that he feels momentarily lightheaded, has to sit at the edge of her bed to avoid hitting the floor.
Slowly, he reaches for her, his hand going to her chin and gently angling her face to inspect the micro-cuts littering her cheek.
“You okay?”
The pause that stretches between them is lengthy, but his thumb never stops its arc along her jaw.
“I lied to you,” she says eventually.
He says nothing, just waits. He’s always like this, drawing secrets out of her with his silence, and it would infuriate her now if not for the look in his eyes, something raw in the warm amber that has quickly become her favorite color.
She swallows thickly, wets her lips where they’ve cracked from the two explosions of the day.
“When you reviewed Dr. Merrill’s evaluation with me on the jet,” she clarifies. “When you pointed out my overcompensating and I said it wouldn’t be a problem on the job. I lied.”
Maybe I have been working a little bit harder to regain people’s trust. Is that such a bad thing? he remembers her saying. It hadn’t been the first time he’d looked at her and seen his own reflection mirrored back to him, but it had been the time that made everything simmering between them make sudden beautiful sense, and he’d thought back to running into the Hollow Creek Killer’s house without backup or a vest as he’d responded from experience, It only is if you use it to avoid dealing with what you went through.
“I know,” he says now. “That’s why I went in.”
She nods to herself then moves so she’s sitting taller in the bed, her shoulders drawn back. “My gun and badge are in the drawer.”
“I’m not suspending you.”
She scoffs. “You should. I risked your life.”
“No, Emily,” he sighs, and in five years she’s never heard him so earnest. It strips her of all pretense immediately. “You risked yours. I know what you’re doing,” he says simply, and something in her flares to life at his patience where she expected judgment and rebuke. “I know you think that if you take enough punishment, you’ll earn back everyone’s trust. But you already have it, and there are other ways to show love than by sacrificing yourself.”
There’s a chance she’s misjudged everything—in which case, she’ll cast the blame on her concussion—but she asks the question anyway. It’s her second gamble of the day and it sets her heart racing just as acutely.
“Like?”
He leans in without hesitation and kisses her.
It’s so tender and careful that she gasps into his mouth, and she’s rewarded with a whisper of her name. She wants to chase it from him, make him say it again, but he keeps her slow, bringing a coarse, cut palm to the back of her neck to hold her steady as he moves his lips to her temple. He lingers there for what he hopes is long enough for her to feel it all: his quiet fury giving way to apology, his understanding tumbling into love.
“We have a duty to preserve life when we can, and that includes your own,” he says against her skin, his voice thick. “Do you understand me? We need you alive. I need you alive.”
She thinks of the team burying her, for real this time—another body to lay to rest, Will’s already one too many—and she finally begins to cry, crushing him to her chest.
Their ribs are far too bruised for the embrace, but neither of them protest.