𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐟 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐞𝐫

eleven

Fuck.

Lou had forgotten about the faulty hinges. Shit. Shit. Shit. For five years, Lou had embodied a stubborn, unrelenting and measured calm but, as the seconds dragged on, she felt her iron façade slipping.

"Jack, let me out!" She struggled against the door, kicking and clawing at the wood, begging it to relent, "Please, please, please let me out."

On the other end of the door, Jack finally understood, not the reason for, but the enormity and fatality of his mistake. The young boy struggled against the door, summoning all of his strength. "I can't!"

The realisation that she was trapped hit her like a bullet to the heart. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't see. She was dizzy with a quiet dread. She sunk to the floor like a corpse weighted with bricks thrown into in a stagnant lake.

She couldn't run any further —what was chasing her had finally caught up with her.

"Big girls don't cry, big girls don't cry, big girls don't cry, big girls don't cry," Lou whispered over and over again, rocking back and forth with her head in her hands.

Her father had told her that. Stop crying. Stop behaving like a child. Apparently, nine was the age where you had to grow up and act like an adult. On the day he'd said those words, she'd fallen and grazed her knees. She thought if he could just see the blood running down her shins then he might let her in on a secret. She thought he might confess that he had been sleeping for a very long time but, on seeing that his daughter needed him, he had woken up. But that didn't happen. Lou never told anyone, but, that day at the park, she'd fallen on purpose. She was testing her father. And he failed. The day before she'd seen a girl —Avery's friend Maria— fall. Maria hadn't even scrapped her knees but she'd cried. Her father had picked her up and hugged her until her sobs subsided into hiccups. Then he put Maria on his shoulders and bought her ice cream. Oh, Lou had thought, maybe my daddy does love me —he just doesn't know I'm hurting. So she had hurt herself. But she didn't get ice cream, no, she got told to do what you do best and be quiet —big girls don't cry.

But for once she wasn't quiet. For the first time in five years, Lou let the tears fall. The sobs racked her body relentlessly, purging the oxygen from her body and replacing it with that feeling. It was like a panic attack without the panic. Because there was nothing to fear, not once she was confronted by it, because the worst had happened. But she had everything to feel. And, my god, she felt. There was only pain. So much pain. All around her. Everywhere. As infectious as a virus and as deadly as poison. She wept as she remembered. She remembered it all. Avery and the man who killed her; the man who almost killed Lou. She remembered the sirens, the hospital, the blood. So much blood. Avery butchered, lying so still that she didn't seem real. She wasn't real anymore. Her chest gaped open, revealing her still heart and her still lungs. She remembered her parents' faces. She remembered watching them break. She remembered the way they looked at her as if to say, you did this.

It was an hour later when Hotch returned. He heard her crying and, because he knew that Lou didn't cry, he feared the absolute worst. He'd dropped his groceries, shattering a jar of tomato sauce and bruising several apples, and went in search of his son. Jack, although he didn't understand why Lou was so upset, told him what had happened.

In the end, Hotch sent Jack to the living room while he broke the door down with a crowbar from Lou's toolkit. When he finally got to her, he reached for her but she pushed him away. She was as pale as paper and her eyes, unaccustomed to tears, were bloodshot and lachrymose —almost deranged. Once out of that room, she wiped her eyes and smoothed down her hair and then, showing no trace of anything human, announced that she was going for a walk.