The Waste Land, 17/?
Title: The Waste Land
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Team-centric - gen
Genre: Drama/Suspense
Summary: Part Two: Reid is missing, JJ is in surgery and the unsub they’re trying to catching isn’t the unsub they should be worried about. The fallout from this case will change their lives in the way they most fear.
Author’s Notes: Betaed by the awesome Windy City Dreamer.
Warnings: Character Death
The Waste Land
Part Two: A Thunderstorm
‘When you’re dead you’re dead.’
Kurt Vonnegut
‘One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.’
Emily Dickinson - One Need Not Be A Chamber to Be Haunted
Chapter Two - Enter Night (Prentiss)
Rossi accompanies her to the hospital - partially to make sure she gets there in one piece, partially to get the latest on JJ’s condition, and partially to get Garcia so that they can head back to the police station. Three agents down is bad enough. Hotch had given Will a call, the former detective having pledged his presence at the hospital before the night is through. If all goes well, Prentiss is hoping that she should be out of there by then, but of course, things never really seem to go well.
Rossi bids her farewell as she’s checked over by a doctor whose name she hadn’t quite caught. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches as he makes his way down the hall, no doubt to find Garcia and divulge the boundaries of their monumental screw up. They’d had the unsub within their grasp, and now JJ’s fighting for her life, and Reid could be dead for all she knows. She isn’t feeling too crash-hot herself.
She’s taken down to Radiology for an MRI, and she’s vaguely reminded of the other head injuries she’s had the pleasure of experiencing. A relatively unsupervised adolescence in a multitude of different countries had led to a number of different hospital experiences, at least two of which involved minor concussions, one that had gotten her grounded for several months, and one which her mother still isn’t privy to the full story of. Milwaukee and Colorado had both earned her MRIs, and a healthy dose of sick leave as well, and she’s desperately hoping that that isn’t going to be the case tonight. She still has the image of the unsub fresh in her mind, all her thoughts concentrating on not letting it escape. It could be a vital piece to the puzzle.
They want to keep her overnight for observation, which doesn’t really surprise her, but she’s annoyed by it nonetheless. The team needs her. The team needs everyone. They’re more than just the sum of their individual parts.
Garcia and Rossi had evidently waited around for confirmation that she isn’t about to drop dead, a fact for which she’s kind of grateful, but at the same time, she’d prefer that they had double-timed it back to the police station to look for the son of a bitch that has taken Reid. Garcia’s eyes are edged with red, and she’s definitely not the happy-go-lucky technical analyst that Prentiss is so used to seeing. JJ’s still in surgery, she learns, and it’s touch and go. The knife hadn’t pierced any major organs, but she had lost a lot of blood.
‘We need to go,’ says Rossi after what feels like an age, but in reality, it’s only been five or so minutes. Her mind is playing tricks on her tonight, but she’s still grasping onto that face. The sketch artists Hotch had sent around arrive not long after Rossi and Garcia leave, and by that point, it’s well into the early hours of the morning.
She describes to them the face as best as she can - she still has that image in her mind, but it’s an image that had been marred by the wind and the rain, and she’s hoping like that hell that the sketch has even a passing resemblance to the man that they’re chasing.
The sketch artists leave, and it’s as though a great weight has been lifted, and yet her body feels so much heavier. The weight of the day’s events is finally allowing itself to crush her. Her mind wants nothing more than to check out of hospital and to get back to work, but the rest of her is perfectly happy to lay back and embrace the darkness of sleep.
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Team-centric - gen
Genre: Drama/Suspense
Summary: Part Two: Reid is missing, JJ is in surgery and the unsub they’re trying to catching isn’t the unsub they should be worried about. The fallout from this case will change their lives in the way they most fear.
Author’s Notes: Betaed by the awesome Windy City Dreamer.
Warnings: Character Death
The Waste Land
Part Two: A Thunderstorm
‘When you’re dead you’re dead.’
Kurt Vonnegut
‘One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.’
Emily Dickinson - One Need Not Be A Chamber to Be Haunted
Chapter Two - Enter Night (Prentiss)
Rossi accompanies her to the hospital - partially to make sure she gets there in one piece, partially to get the latest on JJ’s condition, and partially to get Garcia so that they can head back to the police station. Three agents down is bad enough. Hotch had given Will a call, the former detective having pledged his presence at the hospital before the night is through. If all goes well, Prentiss is hoping that she should be out of there by then, but of course, things never really seem to go well.
Rossi bids her farewell as she’s checked over by a doctor whose name she hadn’t quite caught. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches as he makes his way down the hall, no doubt to find Garcia and divulge the boundaries of their monumental screw up. They’d had the unsub within their grasp, and now JJ’s fighting for her life, and Reid could be dead for all she knows. She isn’t feeling too crash-hot herself.
She’s taken down to Radiology for an MRI, and she’s vaguely reminded of the other head injuries she’s had the pleasure of experiencing. A relatively unsupervised adolescence in a multitude of different countries had led to a number of different hospital experiences, at least two of which involved minor concussions, one that had gotten her grounded for several months, and one which her mother still isn’t privy to the full story of. Milwaukee and Colorado had both earned her MRIs, and a healthy dose of sick leave as well, and she’s desperately hoping that that isn’t going to be the case tonight. She still has the image of the unsub fresh in her mind, all her thoughts concentrating on not letting it escape. It could be a vital piece to the puzzle.
They want to keep her overnight for observation, which doesn’t really surprise her, but she’s annoyed by it nonetheless. The team needs her. The team needs everyone. They’re more than just the sum of their individual parts.
Garcia and Rossi had evidently waited around for confirmation that she isn’t about to drop dead, a fact for which she’s kind of grateful, but at the same time, she’d prefer that they had double-timed it back to the police station to look for the son of a bitch that has taken Reid. Garcia’s eyes are edged with red, and she’s definitely not the happy-go-lucky technical analyst that Prentiss is so used to seeing. JJ’s still in surgery, she learns, and it’s touch and go. The knife hadn’t pierced any major organs, but she had lost a lot of blood.
‘We need to go,’ says Rossi after what feels like an age, but in reality, it’s only been five or so minutes. Her mind is playing tricks on her tonight, but she’s still grasping onto that face. The sketch artists Hotch had sent around arrive not long after Rossi and Garcia leave, and by that point, it’s well into the early hours of the morning.
She describes to them the face as best as she can - she still has that image in her mind, but it’s an image that had been marred by the wind and the rain, and she’s hoping like that hell that the sketch has even a passing resemblance to the man that they’re chasing.
The sketch artists leave, and it’s as though a great weight has been lifted, and yet her body feels so much heavier. The weight of the day’s events is finally allowing itself to crush her. Her mind wants nothing more than to check out of hospital and to get back to work, but the rest of her is perfectly happy to lay back and embrace the darkness of sleep.