Trials and Tribulations

Chapter 1

It had been a little over half an hour since everyone had left for the day. Emily Prentiss was still at her desk. A pen in one hand, her head resting in the other, and her desk full of paperwork.

Emily heard footsteps somewhere behind her and although most of her coworkers had left already, the building was always busy. The footsteps arrived next to her desk and she finally lifted her head. It was Aaron Hotchner.
"What are you still doing here?" he asked

"oh uh I have a lot of paperwork" she said making eye contact with him.

"go home. the paperwork will be there tomorrow"

"see that's what i'm trying to avoid"

"fair point. grab all that stuff and meet me in my office, we can get it done in half the time if we work together" he said, and with that he walked away up into his office, leaving the door open.

Emily wanted to protest. Hotch had enough of his own work to do but she knew arguing with him would go nowhere and honestly he had a good point. She took a big gulp of coffee then gathered her papers and headed into his office, sitting down in one of the chairs on the other side of his desk.

"This is weird" she said.

"what is?" hotch asked.

"me sitting here" she chuckled "all I can think of is the first time I was in this chair, interviewing for this job"

Hotch gave a small smile "yeah you've come a long way" he said.
Emily returned the smile and the two of them got to work.

Later that night Emily was home and she was exhausted. She decided on leftover pasta and an apple as her dinner, which she ate quickly.
She changed out of her work clothes and into comfortable clothes and washed her face before getting settled into her bed. She put on a tv show and mindlessly watched for only around 15 minutes before dozing off. with her beloved cat Sergio at her feet.

Prentiss ran down the hallway as fast as she could.
her heart was pounding.
it was dark and dirty and she didn't know what direction to go.
suddenly an ear piercing scream filled the silence.
"jj" she thought.
she turned and ran in the direction of the sound.
she tripped over something on the ground.
she got up and looked behind her.
it was reid's body.
she backed up and covered her mouth in shock.
she backed up into something else.
morgan's body.
she felt bile rising in her throat and turned around.
Garcia's body, and Rossi's body on the ground.
at the end of the hallway she saw hotch hanging from the ceiling.

With a gasp and a whole body jolt she was awake. her heart was racing, she was sweating all over and panting.

"oh my god" she said under her breath.
it took her 20 minutes to slow her breathing and calm down enough to go to sleep.