Darling deception- a criminal minds fanfic

Cave foes

To say that the cave was dark would be the understatement of the century, and to say that Darling was soaked to the bone would be in a similar vain.

After falling what felt like hundreds of feet onto hard rocky terrain and somehow not drowning when she passed out for however long, she realised that she had smashed into some kind of body of water- along with the jiggered rocks sticking out of it that her body had moved to with the water when she was unconscious to stop her drowning.

"Holy shit" she sat for a moment, catching her breath and processing what had happened.

She had ran into a cave, she willingly ran into a collapsing cave where four people had gone missing and were presumed dead weeks ago- a cave that she didn't even know if Morgan or Hotch were in anymore.

"H-Hotch?!" Darling yelled up, coughing up water as she tried to keep herself focused on a task to not spiral.

"Derek?!" She called up again, searching her pockets for her radio- of which was half destroyed by the water- and pulling out the torch instead which luckily was still working, although it did very little against the all-consuming dark of the cave that continued past the water.

Darling sighed, she knew she should wait there for anyone to find her- but she also knew that she was however many feet down a straight down drop hidden behind a rock that no one would suspect led to anything other than a wall.

So she attempted to swim back through the water and began walking further into the caving system, banging her radio rhythmically on the wall in case Hotch or Morgan was anywhere nearby- and if she was honest, she needed some kind of noise to survive the darkness.

It wasn't that she was afraid of the dark... okay, she absolutely was- still opting to leave any sort of lamp or fairy light on at night when she slept- but it was more so the claustrophobic feeling that the dark brought.

That suffocating, air sucking, pitch black darkness that made her skin crawl.

"Think Darling, come on- if you just think then you don't have room to be scared" she reminded herself, creating distractions in her head to stop thinking about the terrifying situation she had gotten herself into.

"Rossi was right" she sighed at herself, "you stupid risk taker- now look at you, talking to yourself in a cave... very cool."

She unzipped her water soaked jacket, flinging it over her shoulder so it could dry as much as possible- pausing when she looked down at her now almost sheer body suit and bra underneath, her niece's words hitting her like a truck again.

Slut.

She shook her head at herself, hating how she went back to that mindset again after spending so many years trying to reclaim her body and squash the idea that 'slut' was anything more than a sexist, weak insult used to try to control her.

But there was a reason her father said it so much, why the kids at her school would mock her with it for no reason, why it stuck with her all of these years; because deep down, they all knew it hurt her more than she would admit.

She pulled her jacket back on as she rounded the corner, almost tripping over the sudden edge of the path that led to yet another drop instead of the continued path the other side of the small riverine.

"Shoot-" she quickly steadied herself on the rocky walls, shining her light down the terrifying mouth of the drop and deciding that trying to shuffle her way around the slight lip of the overhang on the walls would be better than dropping into yet another abyss.