Jet Lag

Chapter 2: Go

"Prentiss."

Pain blossoms out from her chest and she can feel the familiar throb that occumpanies broken ribs.

"Prentiss," the voice repeates but this warmth spreads over her body.

She opens her eyes and they sting.

Hotch. He's standing over her, saying something, and then pressing his tie to cover her mouth.

"-of here. I'll get Reid." He pulls her up to her feet and she stands dazed. "-over your mouth."

There's blood. In front of where she's now standing. Where Hotch was.

"Emily!" She looks up and Hotch isn't beside her. He's moved and waving. "Go!"

She doesn't see the way his right arm is just limp. She can only see Hotch. She can only see a man who will get her out of this mess.

So she nods but her eyes remained glued to the red, sticky, hot blood at her feet.

"Come on." Reid's slender form is thrown over Hotch's shoulder like a rag doll. His legs laying limply against Hotch's chest.

She can't make herself move. It's a lot of blood. Is it her's? What if it's his?

"Emily," he takes her hand and starts pulling her forward.

The red garment in her hand jogs her memory and she places it over her mouth.

If she's using his tie what is he using?

Hotch had been the first to have consciousness, not to gently, punch him in the face.

The first thing he'd noticed was the smoke.

Both Morgan and Rossi came out fairly unscathed. Hotch did have to lift a few things off of Rossi's right leg to get the older man out. Luckily this wouldn't be the first or the last time Hotch had worked through his pain.

He pulls her through the wreckage, pushing her ahead of him as they make the ascent up the broken wing of the jet to the clear blue sky.

It's not until she gets out does she collapse to her knees as fresh clean air burns her lungs.

"Keep going." Rasp the voice behind her.

She looks back behind her and she's hit with a whirl of smoke. It makes her eyes burn and her lungs threaten to abort her body.

"Go." He pushes her.

She looks around," the others?"

He can hear the wheeze that accompanies her words and he wishes she'd put his tie back to her mouth.

"They're out! Just go!"

His strength is dwindling away. She can hear it in his command and she can see it in the way his eyes fold at the corners. The way his knees bend under the weight of Reid. The slight shaking in his arms as he keeps himself and Reid upright. The way his eyes plead with her instead of command.

"Where are they?" She looks around but all she sees is the white of snow.

"Over there," he nods to the tree line, an area where two other people are leaning against trees.

Reid's weight, albeit there's not a lot, is beginning to create added pain.

Emily leads them, she doesn't see that Hotch is lagging a good distance behind her, and she smiles as she realizes that there's a figure coming towards them and it's Morgan.

"Morgan!" She picks her gate up to meet him because it's such a relief to see someone other than Hotch. She can see Morgan alive instead of just hearing it.

Morgan isn't focused on her though.

"HOTCH!"

Morgan's running.

She turns, the snow is blowing to land stinging kissing to her face and it's hard to see through the blinding reflection of the sun on the snow, and her heart drops.

Her senses are off the walls. She can't see because of the thick snow. Her hearing his only Morgan yelling for Hotch and the wind. She can only smell him. A mixed scent of old spice and mint. Mint?

She wants to ask him where he would acquire a scent like that but then she turns, not to find Hotch close behind her, to find no one.

"HOTCH!"