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Reid wanted to split up. He was so determined to go after Hankel- who was looking more and more like their unsub- that he didn't consider his own safety. For someone so supposedly smart, he didn't do a lot of thinking. JJ would have done her best to talk some sense into him, if he hadn't run off before she could get more than a sentence out. She was the one with seniority; for that alone he should at least stop and listen.
JJ hesitated at the entrance to the barn before she turned around and went after him. They had no idea if Tobias was armed, and really, the possibility that he was their unsub should've been reason enough to slow down and think. There was a reason why Hotch always sent them into the field with at least one other person. There was a reason why horror movies usually split up the main cast at some point or another. There was strength in numbers.
He disappeared into the cornfield about forty feet ahead of her without even hesitating. JJ picked up her speed. She really didn't want to lose sight of him amid the dried out stalks. The corn field had truly terrible visibility, creeping up around her. It would hide her, sure, but it also made it easy to sneak up on her. She had no clue why Reid, who had gone through the same training as her, and would theoretically be just as aware of blind spots, would just walk into it. Apparently, he could memorize everything he read the first time except the FBI training manual.
JJ was barely into the cornfield when she saw the light from Reid's flashlight, which was just about the only thing she could see other than corn, fall. She cursed and abandoned caution, bolting toward him. She had a pretty good idea of where Tobias was now. The corn was not exactly a fan of her ripping through it, though. It whipped her face, her arms, her legs, fighting her every step. There was too much of it to duck around, nor the time to. And of course she had to be wearing heels, because why shouldn't she have to run through a corn field in two inch heels at nearly eight?!
It was far, far too long before she burst through the corn into the open. Her flashlight fell upon a scene that stopped her heart for one breathless moment. He was standing over Reid. He was standing over Reid with a gun in his hands. Reid was sprawled on the ground. His flashlight had been knocked out of his hands and his gun was lost somewhere in the dirt. She couldn't see any blood, but she couldn't tell if he was breathing either. Her mouth was moving before her thoughts caught up from the scene she'd stumbled upon. She couldn't think about Reid right now.
"FBI! Put your weapon down and step away from him!" She screamed. This finally unstuck the unsub, who had frozen the moment she burst through the corn. He smiled a twisted, warped smile and pointed the gun at Reid. All of the fear that was coursing through her veins froze and drained to her feet. She couldn't let her hands start shaking now, though. "I'll shoot!" She started moving again. She really didn't want to shoot him, and if she got close enough...
Bang! The gun went off- there was no way it hadn't hit Reid, it was too close. The next moment, she was throwing herself at Hankel, sending them tumbling, but not before he fired again.
Bang! The gunshot was deafening, it rang in her ears, it echoed through her brain. Her hands were wrenching it away the next moment, pulling at fingers- trusting her weight to help her keep control for just a little longer- then the gun was soaring through the air, out of reach of them both.
Her own gun was somewhere in the dirt behind them. The man bucked under her, attempting to dislodge her, but she already had one of his hands. She pinned it between them and pulled out her handcuffs. He was hitting her with his free hand, kicking and pushing with his legs. It was like riding a mechanical bull. Her attention could not be broken, though. She affixed one loop, and wrestled his other hand into the remaining loop.
She kicked him off, pulling them up in the same motion. He tried to twist away from her in a last attempt to escape, but she'd threaded her arm through his. She more or less dragged him back through the corn and up to the car. JJ dumped the man in the backseat of the SUV- it wasn't a police cruiser, meant to hold prisoners. However, with its reinforced doors and bulletproof glass, it would be pretty damn hard to get out of. She dumped the man in the backseat- there was no time to breathe, though- and pulled the first aid kit out from the glove box. She only paused to check that the latches of it would hold before she sprinted back toward the cornfield.
Images of Reid, sprawled out on the ground, a halo of blood around him, danced in her head. The moment she first saw him on the ground, the unsub standing over him. Those fucking gunshots ringing in her ears. She'd only lost sight of him for maybe five minutes. There was no way that the unsub could've hurt him badly to kill him in that time, right? (His first victims had died in four minutes-) She poured on speed.
Her own body was fighting her- her legs were burning, her lungs were filled with cement. She just had to get to Reid. He had to be okay. He was so young- he was only twenty four, and he had already seen so much. She couldn't be the reason that he died. She just had to be fast, faster than the first time. The corn had been trampled to submission, it had lost that fight. All of her weight was on her toes, tearing through broken corn.
Then she was on the ground, hands thrust out in front of her. Dirt and broken corn stalks went everywhere, but she barely had time to register that before she was up and off again. There was no time to inspect her hands. What were a few scrapes compared to a friend's life? After an entire lifetime of a purgatory of running through the corn, she broke through, greeted by the light of abandoned flashlights. Reid was mostly in shadow, a lump of darkness at the edge of the corn. It was just as bad as every other corpse that JJ had seen and somehow more. He couldn't be dead. He couldn't be. She wouldn't let him die.
She dropped down to Spencer's side. Her hands were trembling. She had a job to do. She grabbed the flashlight that was closer and the flood of light on Spencer made everything better and so so much worse. Apparently, the other bullet had hit him too. There were two oozing holes in his jacket. She set the items she was carrying down and tugged him halfway out of his jacket, pushed up his sweater and shirt. He didn't make a sound, not of pain or protest at being exposed to the biting air.
She fumbled open the first aid kit- red smeared across the bright white plastic. Gauze, she needed gauze. JJ tore open the sealed, sterile packages, only managing to stop it from spilling into the dirt. It was soft, and it caught against her palms and her calluses. She bunched up the neatly folded squares and started stuffing them into the wounds. Reid remained still, quiet, not even a sound. But the blood was pouring, and JJ could see the rise-fall rise-fall of his chest, of breathing.
All of the gauze went into the bullet wounds, already a terrifying shade of red, almost black in the strange shadows cast by the light of the moon and fallen flashlights. She pulled off her own jacket and pressed it to the wounds. She could feel the holes in Spencer through it, could feel as the blood seeped through. Her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath and pushed harder. It had to be painful, to have so much pressure on fresh bullet wounds, but still, he didn't make a sound. Was he even awake?
JJ's hands were part of a dam holding back an impossible tide. Blood flowed by, into, through, out. It dribbled past her fingers and into the dirt, which was so dry it was basically just dust. It made an awful sort of mud, a lake that she was kneeling on the edge of. It was Spencer's life, and she was holding it in her hands. Every rivulet brought him a little bit closer to an edge that he couldn't come back from. She couldn't fix this- he needed help she couldn't prove. And there was no one coming for them. By the time that anyone realized that everything had gone wrong, Spencer's life would have slipped through her fingers.
She kept one hand against the wound, and pressed down on it with her knee. Her phone. She had to get a connection- Someone had to hear her. She had no idea if she'd be able to get a connection out in the middle of this god-forsaken corn. There was a radio in the SUV. She should've used it to call for help. It might still be iffy, but it was something, some hope that was better than none at all. She found and dialed the numbers based on touch, and held her phone up as high as she could get without lifting any weight off of Spencer's wounds. Ring... Ring... Ring...
Then that flat tone. She didn't even have to look at her screen to know that it was informing her that the call couldn't get through because it lacked the cell signal to do so. She shifted, and tried again. And again, and again. JJ shifted the position of the phone as much as she could without removing any pressure from Spencer's wounds, but there was only so much she could do to get a signal when there wasn't one to begin with. Still, she tried. Nothing was going through. Her hand, the one she'd trapped under her knee, was going numb.
Ring... Ring... Ring... Failed. Failed, failed, failed. How much longer until Spencer's heart failed? Ring... Ring...
"Is that my alarm?" JJ nearly dropped her phone. Spencer was looking at her, gaze cloudy and confused. He started to push himself up. She did drop her phone this time, using her newly freed hand to push him back down to the ground.
"No. Stay on the ground, okay? Please don't strain yourself." Spencer nodded and JJ reapplied the pressure she'd been holding. He let out a horrible noise that JJ never wanted to hear again, something between a squeal and whimper. He shut his eyes, but not before JJ saw the tears in them. She glanced away for a moment while he struggled to put himself back together. Pain was nothing compared to bleeding out.
"What happened?" He whispered. Pain twisted through the words, pushing them into crackling higher tones. JJ swallowed- Spencer wouldn't appreciate any pretty lies.
"You got shot. Twice."
"I don't remember that." His words were slow, much slower then Spencer normally spoke.
"You were already on the ground by the time I got here. What was the last thing you remember before you woke up?" JJ had plenty of experience questioning witnesses. If she could comfort a complete stranger through the worst stay here- there was absolutely no hope of l days of their life, she could keep Spencer calm until help arrived. But help had to be called to arrive. She didn't have to see her phone's screen to know the message splashed across it- No Signal.
"I was walking through the corn and looking for Tobias." That was something. Not something that JJ didn't already know; it was just more than nothing. It wasn't really the words that were important, though, was it? Spencer didn't remember what happened to him, and he was still hesitating over his words. Under the pain and fear, there was still a layer of fog over Spencer's face. She shone a flashlight into Spencer's eyes. He winced, but his eyes didn't react as fast as he did. Between that and the memory gap, it was pretty clear that Spencer had a concussion. JJ huffed. She couldn't exactly leave, not with his life in her hands, but if she stayed, it was only a matter of time.
"Spence, Spence, can you look at me?" Spencer mumbled some protest about how she was going to flash a light in his face again. Slowly, slowy, far too slowly, he titled his head back toward her, half opening his eyes. "I need you to listen to me, okay? I need to call an ambulance, but I can't do that here. There isn't any signal. I'm going to go back to the car, so I can use the radio. I need you to place your hands where mine are, and press down." Spencer stared at JJ for a moment. The confusion was so foreign on his face that he looked like a completely different person. Just when JJ thought she was going to have to drag his hands to the wound herself, she felt his hands on hers.
Quickly, she pulled away. Blood gushed out, coating her hands in a brand new rush. She guided Spencer's hands to the wound and pressed down with them. He made a whimper, which was just about one of the worst sounds she'd ever heard. She'd heard more people in pain than she'd ever admit, and it was so, so, so much worse coming from someone she knew. He wasn't stimming the blood as effectively as she had. It was better than nothing, though. She should hurry. She sent one last glance over her shoulder and darted through the corn field. She kept dialing as she went as fast as she dared to. No signal, no signal, no signal.
The car came into view. She opened the front passenger door and grabbed at the radio, pulling it out quickly, before slamming the door and locking it again. Hankel spat curses at her as she turned the radio. She never thought that she'd ever have to use the emergency channel, even though she'd made an effort to memorize it. Well, Gideon had made an effort to make the entire team memorize it. She managed to give her location to the operator, explaining the situation and where they were, before hanging up.
Help was on the way. The knowledge lent strength to JJ's legs, and she pushed herself. Just a little bit faster. Just a little less time. She saw the glow of the flashlights and skidded to a stop. She dropped back down to Spencer's side. She found the wounds again, and pressed against them. Spencer yelped at the pressure, but the blood didn't flow as freely. Spencer's hands helped create a more effective dam. It was still too much blood to be losing. The ground that JJ was kneeling was wet.
"Hey Spence, I'm back." She whispered. She adjusted her hands to press down harder.
"Owww." Spencer whined, and it was startling how young he seemed. How young he was. "Why'd you do that?"
"I'm trying to stop the blood from leaving your body." JJ explained. Her voice shook more than it normally did, and she swallowed. She'd rather face down a sea of flashing lights and terrified questions then be here, doing this. Silence lapsed, no sound except Spencer's labored breathing and the sound of wind through the corn. It was overbearing, pressing down around JJ. Time had decided that it wasn't going to run, that tonight, this night deserved to be immortalized in time forever. It was JJ and Spencer's life, slipping through her fingers in the calm of an early autumn night in Texas. "Spence? You still there?"
"Did you know that the average adult has five quarts of blood? The heart pumps about five gallons of blood a day. Also, it's technically a tissue, since blood's got living cells in it." Spencer replied. He sounded spacy, pausing for long moments between words. He let the words roll off, lazy dropping them, instead of the rapid-fire pace that she normally associated with Spencer's information dumps. JJ swallowed.
"Um... do you have any other things to talk about?" She asked. She didn't want to think about blood, not when it was actively seeping from Spencer. Not when it was the timer that she was betting against. Spencer went quiet at that, not saying anything for a while. That was even worse. She could barely tell that he was breathing, that he was still here. After a moment of silence, just when she was thinking about speaking again, Spencer spoke up again.
"The stars are really bright." He mumbled. "They're so clear."
"Are you not used to them being?" JJ asked.
"In Las Vegas... the city was so... it drowned out the stars. Too much light pollution.." JJ was starting to get sick of the kneeling, her knees were screaming in protest. She just had to hold out a little longer. JJ couldn't imagine not being able to see the stars. "Was it like that in Vermont?" The question caught JJ off guard. She had to think for a moment, trying to pull her mind away from the warmth of the blood.
"No, on a clear night like tonight, you can see so many stars. It doesn't matter how bright the moon was, because you can walk by their light alone. And when you look up..." JJ swallowed, gathering herself before she continued on. "It's beautiful, Spence. I sometimes still can't believe that it was real. It was like being in a totally different world."
"You're still here." Spencer was trying for sassy, and failing miserably. She pasted on a smile and agreed. "I... don't look at the stars very often. I should.."
"Do you know any constellations?" JJ asked. Spence hummed in reply. The soft noise was almost lost in the sound of the wind rustling through the corn.
"I know the stories... can't ever find the... the actual constellations..." Spencer explained. His voice drifted off before he could finish whatever he was talking about, though.
"Spence? Spence!" JJ hissed, trying to wake him without removing her hand from his gut, to no avail. She pressed her hands into the wounds as she could, trying to get them to stop shaking. Her whole body was shaking. How much blood had he lost? How much longer did he have? She didn't have a single clue. All she knew was that help was coming, and they were very, very far away. She couldn't help the tears that slid down her face. She let them roll down it uninterrupted. She had to keep pressure on Spencer's wounds. It felt like time had decided to abandon them there, in the middle of the field.
Then she heard voice calling, in the way they did when they were calling for a missing person. First name, pause, first name, last name. It took only a moment to recognize who they were calling for. JJ found her voice and screamed.
"We're over here! Officer down!" She kept yelling, and light burst into the clearing, spot lighting her and Spencer. Someone guided her away from Spencer, and she went with the motion, too exhausted to protest. She kept her eyes firmly on Spencer the entire time, though, until medics came and separated them. "Is he going to be okay?" She asked, not really directing the question at anyone.
"He's strong." Emily said. It wasn't an answer. She offered JJ a hug, and she leaned into the touch. Spencer could make it through. He had to. As Emily walked JJ back to the cars, she glanced up at the sky. The stars were just as beautiful as she remembered.