nina cried power [SPENCER REID]

twenty-five.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:
THE GREAT ESCAPE

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The nurse hadn't been tucking the blanket in by Nina's bedside.

On the afternoon after her visit, she tries to stand to go to the toilet, and although Agent Prentiss (who is on Nina-Duty at the time) tells her not to, she is determined to stand on her own. She doesn't want to piss with someone watching her. But her right leg gives out on her, and she drops to her knee by the bed, handcuffed arm still hung up at her side, and that's when she sees it.

Causing a lump in the mattress, jammed in under the sheet and against the bed frame, there's a knife. She can see the glimmering side of it, running along the bedside, just a thin line of silver.

Nina grins.

"Whoa there," Emily's voice says.

Two hands dig under Nina's armpits and she's pulled upright, still grinning. Forcing herself to appear neutral (which is easy, because she just focuses on the pain and lets the script write itself), she lets Emily right her posture and complains, "Could be a bit more gentle."

With one hand, Emily unlocks her cuffs, giving Nina a stern look from beneath her dark eyelashes as she does so. "Don't be naughty."

Nina gasps, flexing her free left arm at the wrist. "Of course not!"

With one arm around her shoulders, Emily helps her across the tilted floor to the bathroom, Nina having to grip her side with the other hand. She can walk fine -- mostly. That'll have to be something she works on.

Because with the knife there, she just has to stall as she heals, and when she has the chance -- she has to take it.

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The following evening, there's a switch in shifts on who's watching her, and her time comes: Morgan steps out of the room to have a word with a JJ, mostly about how Nina is able to go to the bathroom on her own now, leaving her to take the knife and slip it under her hospital gown.

When the agents glance in at her through the partly open doorway, Nina is ready just in time and looks up and smiles and waves. They look away. Her smile drops.

Now that she thinks about it, Jennifer Jareau is probably reporting information from the other side of the hospital wall: about her hotel room, about Edelstein, her finances, her family, her past and present and future. Because apparently these agents have nominated themselves to play the Ghosts in A Christmas Carol, and they seem to know all there is to know about her.

"Heyyy! Jennifer!" Nina exclaims like she's greeting an old friend when JJ finally enters, closing the door behind her with a soft click. She splays her arms wide as the blonde approaches the bed, her posture like a long, elegant brushstroke. "Got me any magazines? Any grapes?"