Philophobia

Fifty-One; Emily

March 6th, 2011
3:12 am
Boston, Massachusetts

She woke up screaming, her face wet with tears and her mind racing a million miles a minute. From her seated position she looked at the time, flopping back onto the bed hopelessly upon realizing the early hour. She closed her eyes using her hands to cover them as she did.

Eliza jumped, however, when the door came flying open. Her father was standing there, a gun in his hand. Eliza retreated slightly from him, pushing her back on the bed frame.

"Christ Lizzie, you scared the shit out of me!" reprimanded Doyle.

"Bad dream," Eliza muttered as she cast her gaze to the duvet.

"Right." Doyle walked across the room, sitting on Eliza's bed and putting a hand on her knee. "You know you can talk to me about anything, right?"

"No."

"Well...you can." Doyle pursed his lips, confused with his daughter's answer. He then got up and walked out of the room, not looking back at her or saying anything. One of his henchmen closed the door behind him, and it closed echoing across the bare room. Eliza knew there was no point in trying to escape. A guard was most likely outside her door, and her father had put her in the room on the top floor to prevent a window escape.

She sighed as she lay back down, rolling onto her side. Her eyes caught on her cell phone, which was sitting on the bedside table. Doyle allowing her to keep it as a form of control. Eliza had the power to call her team, to tell her where she was and yet she chose not to. Reaching out, Eliza grabbed the phone knowing there would be no messages. It was an old phone, and she'd deleted all the important numbers to prevent her from calling them, from calling him in a moment of desperation. It was a stupid idea though, because the phone no longer worked. She couldn't call anyone even if she tried.

To her surprise, there was a message waiting on the phone. The number looked familiar, but she couldn't place it and she regretted not memorizing the phone numbers of her former team just in case. Fingers trembling, she pressed a couple of buttons then waited for the message to play.

"Hey, it's me." Garcia. Eliza's throat clenched, tears building. "Hotch asked me to try all your numbers, and I have this as an old listing, and you probably don't even use it anymore, but if it is you and you're out there, come home, please. God, Eliza, what did you think, that we would just let you walk out of our lives? I am so furious at you right now!

"Then I think about how scared you must be, how you're in some dark place all alone. But you're not alone, okay? You are not alone. We are in that dark place with you. We are waving flashlights and calling your name. So if you can see us, come home. If you can't, then... then you stay alive... because we're coming." Garcia paused, presumably to wipe tears. "I, uh, I also thought you should hear this. It's from a while ago, but if you won't let me talk sense into you, maybe you'll listen to Reid." Eliza bit her lip, tears already falling from her eyes, her body racking with sobs that weren't yet fully developed. The recording sounded with typing, and then Spencer Reid began talking.

"Elizabeth Doyle, I'm not sure how to say goodbye to you. Maybe it's because I don't want to, or maybe it's because I know we were always destined to meet. I don't necessarily believe in other lives, because there is no hard scientific evidence supporting them but I do know that no matter the life, or dimension, or timeline we were meant to fall in love." A sob escaped Eliza's lips as she transferred her body to the floor, desperate for something concrete in her life. Reid's voice was like music to her ears, and she would have listened to him talk forever.

"Statistically it takes men eighty-eight days for men to fall in love, but I knew I was in love with you the first time we spent time together, watching baby goats at the farmers market. While I was alive, I never actually told you I loved you. This was in part because women take an average of one hundred and thirty-four days to fall in love, but also because you admitted to me on our very first date you had philophobia, and I didn't want to risk scaring you off. Now, I'm in a life or death situation and I can't help but regret all the things I didn't do.