Aftermath

I had been the first. Which was odd because I was so much younger than the rest, save Reid. It hadn’t been like I thought. I had been expecting some menial, pathetic way to die, like having a stroke or getting hit by a car. I had never wanted it, the way I had died.

The least that I would of wanted was to see them all, just one final time. To keep a final memory, the last one of them all. I had never wanted to die like this. Beaten not a block away from my office, kept less than a mile away from my home, dumped in the place that had held my best memories once.

I was happy that I had died. It was odd because I wanted nothing more than to be back. It was better that they hadn’t seen me alive, trapped in that hell. Seeing their friend, wife, colleague, and so much more, broken, unable to be fixed, right next to them, but further than anyone could ever be pulled back. It would break the team even more, when my kidnapping and corpse had not done the job. It would destroy them all beyond repair.

Although it seemed like the team would never recover, I knew they would. They were strong enough. They all had different ways of coping, dealing with the inevitable pain, but the most painful was the team’s mutual obsession with finding my killers. It would stay with them forever, finding out what had really happened to me. Every spare second the had, they all got together and feverishly attempted to find the people who had killed and kidnapped me, exactly like how we used to. Except they would never profile me. Not a single time out of the hundreds that they had tried to figure it out. They talked about me like they never known me, like a complete stranger, like one of the countless victims we had gone over together such a long time ago. No one mentioned me outside of the case, and it had hurt. How could they forget me so easily? Then one night, listening to the Hotch’s silent tears, Garcia’s open weeping, and other members of the team mourn over me together, I had finally realized.

This was the only way that they knew to deal with my death. And wasn’t just my death. It would not of been this bad for everyone if I had just passed in my sleep. They were all mourning because the toll of what I had faced was finally getting to them. My mangled body, not even close to resembling me before was starring in their dreams every night. They were mourning for the way that I had died. I had done so too, while I was still in that hellhole, but I was at peace with it, in some deranged way. But my family was not even close to doing so.

The day months later, when my replacement came was one of the worst days. Everyone immediately hated her to some degree, just because she was replacing me. JJ attempted to be nice, but snapped and started to sob when she asked about the permanent case file residing on JJ’s desk. Ross said a brief hello, and then promptly ignored her. Hotch was colder than usual, Garcia was dismally depressed when introduced, Emily didn’t say a single word other than subtle insults, and Morgan almost punched her square in the face two minutes into their bleak conversation. Spencer was alarmingly rude, but I soon found out it was just an act to keep the real emotions at bay when I heard him yelling in an empty room toward the sky, his pent-up anger finally unleashed. He screamed that he hated me, wished that he had never even met me. Said that again and again, and then finally broke down weeping when thought no one was there. Little did he know that I would always be there. Spencer kept twisting his wedding band like he did when he was nervous, and that made my ring finger throb with pain.

My captors had taken my wedding ring and disposed of it, claiming that I was theirs now so I didn’t need it any more. I still don’t know where it is to this day. Out of everyone, Spencer had taken it the hardest. We had envisioned the perfect white-picket fence life together. He had never stopped looking, more so than the others, even after the 18th month mark of my kidnapping. I had wished that he would move on, even if it meant from me. Anything as long as he wasn’t like the zombie that he is now a days.

Even more months passed, the replacement quit, and things gradually started to get better. But they all still carried a sadness within them, still cried at any mention of me, still celebrated my every birthday, still pretended, still remembered. Every member of the team had various pictures of me scattered in their home and office. JJ’s first daughter was named after me, and Morgan and Garcia’s children were Spencer and I’s godchildren. Jack grew up hearing stories about his daddy’s friend, the superhero, who was up in the sky. Spencer always remembered and never moved on, though he tried and I wished.

Slowly their lives progressed, and they laughed more and more, cried less and less. They never forgot, so I was still there with them the entire time, with them never realizing how close I really was, no matter how hard I tried.

The days were monotonous, never changing. But the day that the team had found where I had been held had changed that forever. They had found Hell. The team had gotten a mysterious tip, and they had all rushed over, so eager, so apprehensive, like were going to somehow find me alive in there. I had just slowly followed, unable to do anything else, and made my way back to Hell.

They had cried, and screamed, and yelled, and begged, and tried so hard to forget, tried fruitlessly to burn the memories from their minds. They had wished so hard that it wasn’t real that I could feel it. And it didn’t work. Not at all.

My Spencer’s cries were the worst, anguished sobs coated in sheets of agony, and pleads for me to come back, for it all to be just a terrible nightmare. While I stood right in front of him. How I wished to be back, solving a case with my family, laughing and crying together. What I wouldn’t give to at home with Spencer, snuggled up on the couch with our children tucked in beside us.

After they had left the room, they were never the same .

         They never forgot, so I never left.