No Fearsome Tide: Garcia 3/5
For warnings and notes see masterpost here
no fearsome tide: part three
Garcia
Garcia stumbled toward her front door, drawing her robe around herself, muttering a few choice oaths under her breath as whoever was on the other side pounded on her door again.
“I’m coming.”
She flicked the locks, but left the chain in place as she opened the door, eyes widening in surprise as she identified her visitor, “Hotch?”
“Pack a bag and whatever you want to keep, we have to get out of town, now.”
Garcia stared at him blankly for a moment, her heart pounding fast, Hotch looked worried. Hotch looking worried was never a good thing. Hotch looking worried was his version of panic. “Wha….”
“Penelope,” he emphasised her name, snapping her out of her fugue, “we have to move in the next hour or we may not be able to.”
Garcia nodded quickly, closing the door so that she could unloop the chain before opening it again, letting Hotch into her apartment. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready.” She hesitated, thinking of the others, “What about Kevin and the team?”
“Morgan said he’d get Kevin, JJ claimed Reid, and Rossi’s rounding up Prentiss.” Hotch listed off easily, having clearly expected her to ask, “Jessica and Jack are in my car waiting for us.”
Garcia nodded, swallowing hard before heading to her bedroom and getting changed with record speed before grabbing her go bag and shoving an extra few days of clothes into it. She grabbed another bag, for her equipment this time. She wished she knew what was happening, but at the same time, she knew Hotch well enough to recognise the urgency of the situation and that he wasn’t telling her for a reason. A good reason.
She packed her external hard drives, spare cables and bits and pieces she was likely to need if she had to fix anything, before heading back out into the main room of her apartment, stilling for a moment to watch as Hotch raided her kitchen cupboards. He looked up at her after a moment, a collection of tins in hand, “We need supplies, and we don’t have time to stop. Have you got everything?”
Garcia shook her head, “I just have to grab some stuff from out here and I’ll be ready…” she hesitated for a moment before nodding towards one of the lower cupboards, “there’s a box in there, it’s got a ton of medical stuff and long life supplies in it.”
Hotch raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment, dropping the last few tins into the box he’d grabbed from on top of her refrigerator before going to the cupboard she’d indicated. Garcia moved quickly, grabbing the last few things she needed, casting one regretful glance towards her projector before shouldering her bag and taking hold of her go bag. “I’m ready.”
Hotch nodding, stacking the two boxes before he picked them up, flinching slightly at the weight, “My car’s right in front of the building, there’s room in the back for all of this, and the front passenger seat’s free for you.”
Garcia nodded her understanding, leading the way out of her apartment and down the stairs to where his car was waiting; focusing on what she was doing, refusing to consider what it meant.
Jack startles awake at the first gunshot, just after Garcia and Hotch have swapped places. Hotch was the only one in the car who could use a gun, something that ordinarily wouldn’t have been a problem. Garcia’s hands tighten on the wheel as she tries not to think about how not normal this whole situation is.
Each time Hotch fires, through the open passenger window, Jack flinches, each shot echoes within the car, loud and terrifying. Until now Garcia has managed to avoid being around when the shooting starts, but now she doesn’t have that option. She can’t even look away or close her eyes, she just has to focus on the road in front of her and keep them moving.
Hotch squeezes her leg gently once they’re out of the town that they’d been passing through, and it settles her nerves, just a little, and she’s just a little too grateful that he hasn’t put down his gun.
There’s a network of little cracks across the windscreen, and one edge is stained red, but they’re all alive, if more than a little terrified. Garcia envies Jack a little, even as he cries in his aunt’s arms, Hotch offering a soothing commentary even though his attention is focused outside of the car.
“Hotch,” she had waited until Jack had fallen into an exhausted sleep to speak, not wanting to interrupt Hotch’s flow of reassurances, “where are we going?” She doesn’t ask what’s happening, she knows she should and she wants to, but she’s driving, which is in no means an activity that you want to be distracted from in the middle of night on an unfamiliar road.
She’s only known when to turn because Hotch had told her when and where. It’s nice, knowing he has a destination in mind, but now she’s the one driving, it would be better if she knew as well.
“There’s a summer camp,” Jessica’s the one who speaks, startling Garcia a little, “Haley used to volunteer there, before Jack was born. It’s in the middle of nowhere, but there’s running water and a few cabins.”
“We should get there in an hour or so.” Hotch says, when Jessica finishes speaking, his gun laid in his lap now. “The others should be meeting us there.”
Garcia nods, before realising that they probably can’t see her in the faint light provided by the dashboard, “Ok, could you give me some basic directions, just in case.”
“Of course,” she can hear the apology in his voice, and she’s almost tempted to tell him that it doesn’t matter, that he has other, more important things on his mind, but she can’t find the energy. She just listens as he gives her directions, repeating each step mentally, as a distraction from just how tried she is. Not long now, and she can rest, though she’s not even sure if that’s true. Someone is going to have to be on watch, and it can’t always be Hotch, even though she knows him well to enough to know that he’s probably already preparing himself to do just that.
They reach the camp, driving up the long trail that leads to it past a brightly coloured sign, just as the sun starts to rise. The sight of JJ’s car already there waiting for them is a greater relief though, and Garcia has to force herself not to rush from the car and launch herself in JJ’s arms. Henry’s asleep in the backseat of the car still, sprawled across the lap of a sleeping Spencer, with Will sitting in the passenger watching over them both while JJ stands sentry next to the car, flashlight and gun in hand.
Garcia parks next to them on the other side from JJ, leaving just enough room between them to allow for doors to open, and Hotch climbs out of the car first, holding his own gun. He nods to JJ, who nods back whit an expression more grim than Garcia’s seen in a long time.
“You should both get some sleep,” Hotch murmurs, looking at Jessica then Garcia, “JJ and I will keep watch for now, until the others get here. Once everyone’s here we can figure out what to do next.”
Garcia hesitates, glancing sideways to watch as JJ spoke to Will, most likely an echo of what Hotch has just said, before she turns to meet Hotch’s gaze, “And you’ll tell us what’s happening?”
Jessica makes a soft noise from the back, backing Garcia up and Hotch sighs, somehow managing to look even wearier than he did before, then he nods. “Of course.”
It took another two hours for the others to arrive, and Morgan looks exhausted as Kevin parks the car at the end of the row. Where Rossi and Prentiss, via a rather inventive route, had managed to avoid any encounters during their drive, Morgan’s car looks like it’s been through a war zone. Hotch and JJ are quick to wash all traces of blood off all of the cars, doing what they can to shelter their boys from what’s happening.
Rossi and Prentiss check out the camp’s main cabin before they all move inside, Hotch, JJ, Morgan and Prentiss taking up positions at each of the windows while the others gathered around one of the tables that took up the centre of the open space inside the cabin. Henry and Jack both managed to sleep through being carried from the cars, and it’s clear that their respective guardians are relieved the boys won’t be awake to hear what’s about to be said.
It’s Spencer who volunteers to explain, he’s still eager, somehow, and that’s as much of a comfort to Garcia as the children’s ability to sleep. “Riots started in LA late last night, no one’s sure what caused them, but a lot of people died,” Garcia flinches a little, worried for Amita, but she manages to stay quiet, somehow. “Two volcanoes started to erupt yesterday, releasing more ashes into the atmosphere, and that news coupled with the news about the LA riots started a general panic….” Reid continues, but the more that he says, the more it starts to dawn on Garcia that he doesn’t actually know what’s happening, he’s just overcompensating with data. She swallows hard, turning to look at Hotch, but he isn’t looking at them, he’s staring out of the window.
“Spencer.” She interrupted him mid volcano factoid, knowing that her eyes are too wide and she sounds far too calm, but the truth is, she isn’t driving anymore, there are enough people keeping watch now, so she is going to panic. Just this once she is going to panic and then she’s going to pull herself together and focus on getting through. “Could you just, this once, admit that you don’t know something.”
Spencer stutters to a stop, looking mildly horrified and she can understand why. She never snaps at him, but this isn’t a situation they’ve been in before, so she doesn’t see why he’s so shocked. Under the circumstances, she is being amazingly controlled.
“Garcia…” Spencer starts again, his eyes still wide, but this time it’s Hotch who cuts him off.
“Reid.” Spencer falls silent, but the look he gives Hotch is just as hurt as the one he’d aimed at her moments before. Hotch shifts his weight, turning so that he can look at them while still keeping a line of sight out of the window. “After I heard about what had happened in LA I called JJ, Dave, and Morgan, I was worried that the panic would spread and I wanted to make sure that our families weren’t caught up in it.” He pauses, clearly considering his wording carefully before he continues, “I thought we might have to stay out here for a few days, I didn’t think we’d have to fight to get here.” There’s real regret in his voice, and Garcia feels for him.
On the other side of the room, Morgan shudders a little, but he doesn’t say anything, Kevin rubs his face with a shaking hand and continues to not look at anyone. Garcia wants to reach out to him, but she knows he doesn’t want it, that he can’t accept it just yet.
“So we don’t know what’s happening?” Jessica’s voice is soft, unsure, but she meets Hotch’s gaze steadily. She’s in a room full of people she barely knows, and if it were her, Garcia doesn’t think she’d be as calm.
Hotch sighs and shakes his head, “No.”
They make it a whole month before people start taking sanctuary in each other’s beds. No one comments when they see one of the others stumbling out of a tent that isn’t their own, they don’t even comment when the same person comes out of a different tent the next night.
It’s distinctly possible that it’s the end of the world; people are allowed to take comfort wherever they find it. Plus, it’s not like any of them had exactly met society’s expectations even before the end of world.
More often than not Garcia finds herself sleeping between Kevin and Morgan, sometimes Hotch takes Kevin’s place, but it isn’t all that often. JJ and Will adopt Reid, while Prentiss, Rossi and Jessica form a constant little group, and Jessica stops looking as scared as she did before.
They’re lucky, Garcia knows from what she’s been able to find on the internet. It’s amazing that it’s survived, though Reid is quick to point out that so many places have buried servers now, the fear of EMP’s having driven the run to ensure that everyone’s data would be safe should anything happen. It’s sad, all the effort that’s been made to protect data, when in the long run, the data is useless without any people left to need it.
Their campsite is well equipped, which isn’t really a surprise. It’d been just a few weeks sort of the summer when they’d fled the city, the camp would have been preparing for the influx of children. Henry and Jack have found enough to keep themselves entertained, though every so often they’ll spend a day apart. She hopes that, someday soon, their camp will grow, but at the moment they’re all being very careful to stay close to the camp, only ventured out to the lake or further down the river.
It’s sensible, staying all in the one place for a while, giving the rest of the world some time, but it’s frustrating at the same time. More so for the others than Garcia, Kevin or Jessica. The profilers are all used to being the ones trying to fix things, while Will spent most of his life in the police force. It’s worse for him as well, Garcia can tell, because he’s already lived through a disaster that had cost him his family. She hopes, for their sakes, that they can all stay safe.
She spends her time, whenever she can face it, and for however long she can face it, searching what remains of the internet for information on what’s happening. She searches for any clue as to what happened to lead to this, but she can’t find anything.
There are all of the news reports she remembers, and the published information from various sources, but there’s nothing there. She gets it, after all the lectures she’s had about how they respond to terrorist threats, that sometimes fear is the only thing that is required to cause a whole mass of trouble. She understands it, not entirely, but she’s gotten to know fear pretty well, and she knows that it overrides rational thought. Makes you do crazy things.
The thing is, what she saw, in the car, she can’t bring herself to believe that it was a product of fear and nothing else. There must be something.
The fact that the summer camp remains stubbornly empty of kids, and the distinct lack of traffic on the internet, and of TV or radio broadcasts speaks to something seriously bad happening. Bad enough to stop people in their tracks.
Two months into their enforced solitude Hotch makes a decision, one that her beautiful boy has been pushing for since week two, gathering a group to head out of the camp and see what’s happening in places that actually count as civilisation. Or at least, places that used to, she thinks, before she forces the thought back. She is not going to be negative, not now.
They take JJ’s car, Hotch, Morgan, Prentiss and Will, because it has the most gas left in it and it suffered the least damage. She forces herself to watch them go, standing stiffly at Reid’s side, Jack leaning against her looking far too accepting. He’s too little to be able to match his father’s stoic expression so well and it breaks her heart a little, because she knows there’s nothing she can do to fix that.
They’re still standing, staring at the empty track, long after the car’s tail lights have vanished from sight and if she’s honest, Garcia is tempted to stay there until they come back. Only doing that would suggest that she doesn’t think they’re coming back, when she truly believes that they will. They have to.
It’s Rossi who gets them all moving in the end, pointing out that they have things to be getting on with, most notably the long overdue washing.
They’ve been preserving power, all too aware of the fact that the camp runs on a mixture of battery and gas, both of which having a limited life, though Kevin and Reid have been working on a building a wind turbine to help with that. Which isn’t actually as easy as you would think, because they don’t have everything they need. They’d given Emily a list before the group had left, that included things a lot of things that Garcia had heard of, but had no idea what exactly they did. Computers she understands, building your own power generators, not so much.
But basically, preserving power means not using the washing facilities. There’s a lake, they’ve managed to rig up a line to hang the wet stuff from and it’s a warm summer, so it’s not as much of a chore as it could be. The boys still moan, or at least Jack does. Henry doesn’t have the attention span quite yet to be trusted washing anything, he just tags along because one of his parents is normally present. And it means splashing around in water.
Such are the simple joys of a three year old.
Garcia envies him a little. For Henry this is all just a prolonged holiday. He doesn’t understand the tension that runs between the adults every so often, or why Jack gets frustrated with being stuck in the camp. It’s an adventure for him.
They manage to catch up with the slight backlog of washing. It rained for a few days, and cabin three seemed to be trying to create as much washing, in as short a period as possible. Thankfully, neither of the boys spotted any of the rather questionable stains, having discovered that Uncle Spencer’s socks were fairly effective fishing lures. They’ve covered the length of the line in damp cloth by the time they hear a car approaching the camp.
Garcia and Jessica herd Jack between them, while JJ gathers Henry into her arms and they do their best to fade into the bushes, keeping out of sight of the road, waiting for an all clear from one of the boys. It’s likely that it’s the others back from their trip, but they can’t be sure and it’s better to be safe than sorry. They haven’t seen a single person in the two months they’ve been living in the camp, but they still keep watch, as best they can.
Rossi comes for them, his face giving nothing away, and that only makes Garcia worry more. Profilers hiding things never signals anything good, that much she knows, and if the look on Jessica’s face is anything to go by, she’s learned the same. They walk slowly, the boys in the middle of the four of them, and Garcia feels the dread building. She wants, even honestly considers turning and heading back to the lake. Just five more minutes of enjoying the peace of the lake, not thinking about whatever bad thing has happened outside of their little bubble.
She sees Hotch first, standing near the edge of the car park, his eyes scanning the treeline. He straightens impossibly as he catches sight of Jack, the ghost of a smile on his lips. It makes Garcia’s chest ache. All her boss man ever seems to do is put up masks to protect other people, to make them feel better. She wonders what will happen when he can’t do that anymore.
Morgan moves into sight, a black eye starting to blossom, his shoulders tense, with Will just a few feet behind. Garcia quickens her pace, aware of JJ doing the same. There’s blood in Will’s hair and on the cuff of Hotch’s shirt and they haven’t seen Emily yet.
They reach the car park just in time to see Emily step out of the main cabin, her hair damp, wearing different clothes than she was wearing before. Garcia hurries past the boys, she needs to feel Emily, to make sure she’s ok.
They were gone for less than six hours, but Emily has come back with new ghosts in her eyes, and the boys are wearing theirs. Six hours isn’t long enough to have gotten very far, not long enough for them to have made it back home. Garcia pulls Emily into a hug, aware of JJ doing the same to Will behind, little Henry clinging to his parents’ legs.
There’s a long moment before Garcia pulls back, wiping at her cheeks, and letting Emily pull her towards the cabin, the footsteps of the others following behind loud in the silence. Reid and Kevin have grouped the benches together in a circle, the two of them sitting close together, paler than they’ve looked for a while. Garcia slows a little, glancing back over her shoulder; she hasn’t seen JJ’s car, she’s not sure she wants to, but, they must have.
There are times when curiosity really is a bad thing, instead of a good thing.
She forces herself to keep walking, crossing the room to settle against Kevin’s side, letting him slip an arm around her back as Morgan sat on the bench next to her, his shoulder pressed against hers. She notices how, once they’ve all settled, Hotch is the only one not touching anyone else. Ever the one of the outside.
It takes a moment before Morgan shifts a little, glancing towards Hotch before beginning to speak. It takes a little over half an hour for the four of them, each offering only a few short sentences in turn, as though they’re giving a profile, to tell them all what happened.
Garcia is aware of the tears running down her cheeks, and the solid muscle of Morgan’s arm on her one side, while Kevin shudders on her other side. JJ has curled onto Will, her feet nestled on Reid’s lap. Rossi has claimed a hand each of the women on either side of him. Jack has Henry huddled up against him, leaning back against his father’s legs.
She can’t believe they hadn’t thought to make sure that the boys wouldn’t hear that. They shouldn’t have heard it. Shouldn’t ever have been in the situation to hear something like that.
It’s then, watching Jack’s solemn little face and Henry’s puzzled expression, that she makes her choice. From what they’ve just heard, they can’t stay here much longer. They don’t have the supplies to last too much longer and it isn’t safe for them to travel too much outside of the camp to scavenge for supplies. They can’t guard the camp, there’s too many directions that people could approach from, and not enough cover.
She’s heard Morgan listing off all of the problems with their position, and she knows her team well enough to know that it’s true. It’s the reason Hotch paces more than he sleeps, that Emily is always sitting near a window.
They can’t stay here anymore.
She curls up on the bottom bunk of one of the beds in the cabin she, Morgan, and Kevin have claimed, her laptop across her knees. She connects to the internet, opens a chat window and waits.
There are other people out there, somewhere, she knows, she hopes. People she cares about almost as much as her team. People that she knows can help her find a way to keep her family safe.
It’s almost two hours before a message appears, bearing a familiar screen name. It’s joined a little while later by another. It takes them less than two hours to hash out a plan, one that will keep their families safe. None of them asks what the others have been through in the time since they last spoke. They have to focus on other things.
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part four: Hardison
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no fearsome tide: part three
Garcia
Garcia stumbled toward her front door, drawing her robe around herself, muttering a few choice oaths under her breath as whoever was on the other side pounded on her door again.
“I’m coming.”
She flicked the locks, but left the chain in place as she opened the door, eyes widening in surprise as she identified her visitor, “Hotch?”
“Pack a bag and whatever you want to keep, we have to get out of town, now.”
Garcia stared at him blankly for a moment, her heart pounding fast, Hotch looked worried. Hotch looking worried was never a good thing. Hotch looking worried was his version of panic. “Wha….”
“Penelope,” he emphasised her name, snapping her out of her fugue, “we have to move in the next hour or we may not be able to.”
Garcia nodded quickly, closing the door so that she could unloop the chain before opening it again, letting Hotch into her apartment. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready.” She hesitated, thinking of the others, “What about Kevin and the team?”
“Morgan said he’d get Kevin, JJ claimed Reid, and Rossi’s rounding up Prentiss.” Hotch listed off easily, having clearly expected her to ask, “Jessica and Jack are in my car waiting for us.”
Garcia nodded, swallowing hard before heading to her bedroom and getting changed with record speed before grabbing her go bag and shoving an extra few days of clothes into it. She grabbed another bag, for her equipment this time. She wished she knew what was happening, but at the same time, she knew Hotch well enough to recognise the urgency of the situation and that he wasn’t telling her for a reason. A good reason.
She packed her external hard drives, spare cables and bits and pieces she was likely to need if she had to fix anything, before heading back out into the main room of her apartment, stilling for a moment to watch as Hotch raided her kitchen cupboards. He looked up at her after a moment, a collection of tins in hand, “We need supplies, and we don’t have time to stop. Have you got everything?”
Garcia shook her head, “I just have to grab some stuff from out here and I’ll be ready…” she hesitated for a moment before nodding towards one of the lower cupboards, “there’s a box in there, it’s got a ton of medical stuff and long life supplies in it.”
Hotch raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment, dropping the last few tins into the box he’d grabbed from on top of her refrigerator before going to the cupboard she’d indicated. Garcia moved quickly, grabbing the last few things she needed, casting one regretful glance towards her projector before shouldering her bag and taking hold of her go bag. “I’m ready.”
Hotch nodding, stacking the two boxes before he picked them up, flinching slightly at the weight, “My car’s right in front of the building, there’s room in the back for all of this, and the front passenger seat’s free for you.”
Garcia nodded her understanding, leading the way out of her apartment and down the stairs to where his car was waiting; focusing on what she was doing, refusing to consider what it meant.
Jack startles awake at the first gunshot, just after Garcia and Hotch have swapped places. Hotch was the only one in the car who could use a gun, something that ordinarily wouldn’t have been a problem. Garcia’s hands tighten on the wheel as she tries not to think about how not normal this whole situation is.
Each time Hotch fires, through the open passenger window, Jack flinches, each shot echoes within the car, loud and terrifying. Until now Garcia has managed to avoid being around when the shooting starts, but now she doesn’t have that option. She can’t even look away or close her eyes, she just has to focus on the road in front of her and keep them moving.
Hotch squeezes her leg gently once they’re out of the town that they’d been passing through, and it settles her nerves, just a little, and she’s just a little too grateful that he hasn’t put down his gun.
There’s a network of little cracks across the windscreen, and one edge is stained red, but they’re all alive, if more than a little terrified. Garcia envies Jack a little, even as he cries in his aunt’s arms, Hotch offering a soothing commentary even though his attention is focused outside of the car.
“Hotch,” she had waited until Jack had fallen into an exhausted sleep to speak, not wanting to interrupt Hotch’s flow of reassurances, “where are we going?” She doesn’t ask what’s happening, she knows she should and she wants to, but she’s driving, which is in no means an activity that you want to be distracted from in the middle of night on an unfamiliar road.
She’s only known when to turn because Hotch had told her when and where. It’s nice, knowing he has a destination in mind, but now she’s the one driving, it would be better if she knew as well.
“There’s a summer camp,” Jessica’s the one who speaks, startling Garcia a little, “Haley used to volunteer there, before Jack was born. It’s in the middle of nowhere, but there’s running water and a few cabins.”
“We should get there in an hour or so.” Hotch says, when Jessica finishes speaking, his gun laid in his lap now. “The others should be meeting us there.”
Garcia nods, before realising that they probably can’t see her in the faint light provided by the dashboard, “Ok, could you give me some basic directions, just in case.”
“Of course,” she can hear the apology in his voice, and she’s almost tempted to tell him that it doesn’t matter, that he has other, more important things on his mind, but she can’t find the energy. She just listens as he gives her directions, repeating each step mentally, as a distraction from just how tried she is. Not long now, and she can rest, though she’s not even sure if that’s true. Someone is going to have to be on watch, and it can’t always be Hotch, even though she knows him well to enough to know that he’s probably already preparing himself to do just that.
They reach the camp, driving up the long trail that leads to it past a brightly coloured sign, just as the sun starts to rise. The sight of JJ’s car already there waiting for them is a greater relief though, and Garcia has to force herself not to rush from the car and launch herself in JJ’s arms. Henry’s asleep in the backseat of the car still, sprawled across the lap of a sleeping Spencer, with Will sitting in the passenger watching over them both while JJ stands sentry next to the car, flashlight and gun in hand.
Garcia parks next to them on the other side from JJ, leaving just enough room between them to allow for doors to open, and Hotch climbs out of the car first, holding his own gun. He nods to JJ, who nods back whit an expression more grim than Garcia’s seen in a long time.
“You should both get some sleep,” Hotch murmurs, looking at Jessica then Garcia, “JJ and I will keep watch for now, until the others get here. Once everyone’s here we can figure out what to do next.”
Garcia hesitates, glancing sideways to watch as JJ spoke to Will, most likely an echo of what Hotch has just said, before she turns to meet Hotch’s gaze, “And you’ll tell us what’s happening?”
Jessica makes a soft noise from the back, backing Garcia up and Hotch sighs, somehow managing to look even wearier than he did before, then he nods. “Of course.”
It took another two hours for the others to arrive, and Morgan looks exhausted as Kevin parks the car at the end of the row. Where Rossi and Prentiss, via a rather inventive route, had managed to avoid any encounters during their drive, Morgan’s car looks like it’s been through a war zone. Hotch and JJ are quick to wash all traces of blood off all of the cars, doing what they can to shelter their boys from what’s happening.
Rossi and Prentiss check out the camp’s main cabin before they all move inside, Hotch, JJ, Morgan and Prentiss taking up positions at each of the windows while the others gathered around one of the tables that took up the centre of the open space inside the cabin. Henry and Jack both managed to sleep through being carried from the cars, and it’s clear that their respective guardians are relieved the boys won’t be awake to hear what’s about to be said.
It’s Spencer who volunteers to explain, he’s still eager, somehow, and that’s as much of a comfort to Garcia as the children’s ability to sleep. “Riots started in LA late last night, no one’s sure what caused them, but a lot of people died,” Garcia flinches a little, worried for Amita, but she manages to stay quiet, somehow. “Two volcanoes started to erupt yesterday, releasing more ashes into the atmosphere, and that news coupled with the news about the LA riots started a general panic….” Reid continues, but the more that he says, the more it starts to dawn on Garcia that he doesn’t actually know what’s happening, he’s just overcompensating with data. She swallows hard, turning to look at Hotch, but he isn’t looking at them, he’s staring out of the window.
“Spencer.” She interrupted him mid volcano factoid, knowing that her eyes are too wide and she sounds far too calm, but the truth is, she isn’t driving anymore, there are enough people keeping watch now, so she is going to panic. Just this once she is going to panic and then she’s going to pull herself together and focus on getting through. “Could you just, this once, admit that you don’t know something.”
Spencer stutters to a stop, looking mildly horrified and she can understand why. She never snaps at him, but this isn’t a situation they’ve been in before, so she doesn’t see why he’s so shocked. Under the circumstances, she is being amazingly controlled.
“Garcia…” Spencer starts again, his eyes still wide, but this time it’s Hotch who cuts him off.
“Reid.” Spencer falls silent, but the look he gives Hotch is just as hurt as the one he’d aimed at her moments before. Hotch shifts his weight, turning so that he can look at them while still keeping a line of sight out of the window. “After I heard about what had happened in LA I called JJ, Dave, and Morgan, I was worried that the panic would spread and I wanted to make sure that our families weren’t caught up in it.” He pauses, clearly considering his wording carefully before he continues, “I thought we might have to stay out here for a few days, I didn’t think we’d have to fight to get here.” There’s real regret in his voice, and Garcia feels for him.
On the other side of the room, Morgan shudders a little, but he doesn’t say anything, Kevin rubs his face with a shaking hand and continues to not look at anyone. Garcia wants to reach out to him, but she knows he doesn’t want it, that he can’t accept it just yet.
“So we don’t know what’s happening?” Jessica’s voice is soft, unsure, but she meets Hotch’s gaze steadily. She’s in a room full of people she barely knows, and if it were her, Garcia doesn’t think she’d be as calm.
Hotch sighs and shakes his head, “No.”
They make it a whole month before people start taking sanctuary in each other’s beds. No one comments when they see one of the others stumbling out of a tent that isn’t their own, they don’t even comment when the same person comes out of a different tent the next night.
It’s distinctly possible that it’s the end of the world; people are allowed to take comfort wherever they find it. Plus, it’s not like any of them had exactly met society’s expectations even before the end of world.
More often than not Garcia finds herself sleeping between Kevin and Morgan, sometimes Hotch takes Kevin’s place, but it isn’t all that often. JJ and Will adopt Reid, while Prentiss, Rossi and Jessica form a constant little group, and Jessica stops looking as scared as she did before.
They’re lucky, Garcia knows from what she’s been able to find on the internet. It’s amazing that it’s survived, though Reid is quick to point out that so many places have buried servers now, the fear of EMP’s having driven the run to ensure that everyone’s data would be safe should anything happen. It’s sad, all the effort that’s been made to protect data, when in the long run, the data is useless without any people left to need it.
Their campsite is well equipped, which isn’t really a surprise. It’d been just a few weeks sort of the summer when they’d fled the city, the camp would have been preparing for the influx of children. Henry and Jack have found enough to keep themselves entertained, though every so often they’ll spend a day apart. She hopes that, someday soon, their camp will grow, but at the moment they’re all being very careful to stay close to the camp, only ventured out to the lake or further down the river.
It’s sensible, staying all in the one place for a while, giving the rest of the world some time, but it’s frustrating at the same time. More so for the others than Garcia, Kevin or Jessica. The profilers are all used to being the ones trying to fix things, while Will spent most of his life in the police force. It’s worse for him as well, Garcia can tell, because he’s already lived through a disaster that had cost him his family. She hopes, for their sakes, that they can all stay safe.
She spends her time, whenever she can face it, and for however long she can face it, searching what remains of the internet for information on what’s happening. She searches for any clue as to what happened to lead to this, but she can’t find anything.
There are all of the news reports she remembers, and the published information from various sources, but there’s nothing there. She gets it, after all the lectures she’s had about how they respond to terrorist threats, that sometimes fear is the only thing that is required to cause a whole mass of trouble. She understands it, not entirely, but she’s gotten to know fear pretty well, and she knows that it overrides rational thought. Makes you do crazy things.
The thing is, what she saw, in the car, she can’t bring herself to believe that it was a product of fear and nothing else. There must be something.
The fact that the summer camp remains stubbornly empty of kids, and the distinct lack of traffic on the internet, and of TV or radio broadcasts speaks to something seriously bad happening. Bad enough to stop people in their tracks.
Two months into their enforced solitude Hotch makes a decision, one that her beautiful boy has been pushing for since week two, gathering a group to head out of the camp and see what’s happening in places that actually count as civilisation. Or at least, places that used to, she thinks, before she forces the thought back. She is not going to be negative, not now.
They take JJ’s car, Hotch, Morgan, Prentiss and Will, because it has the most gas left in it and it suffered the least damage. She forces herself to watch them go, standing stiffly at Reid’s side, Jack leaning against her looking far too accepting. He’s too little to be able to match his father’s stoic expression so well and it breaks her heart a little, because she knows there’s nothing she can do to fix that.
They’re still standing, staring at the empty track, long after the car’s tail lights have vanished from sight and if she’s honest, Garcia is tempted to stay there until they come back. Only doing that would suggest that she doesn’t think they’re coming back, when she truly believes that they will. They have to.
It’s Rossi who gets them all moving in the end, pointing out that they have things to be getting on with, most notably the long overdue washing.
They’ve been preserving power, all too aware of the fact that the camp runs on a mixture of battery and gas, both of which having a limited life, though Kevin and Reid have been working on a building a wind turbine to help with that. Which isn’t actually as easy as you would think, because they don’t have everything they need. They’d given Emily a list before the group had left, that included things a lot of things that Garcia had heard of, but had no idea what exactly they did. Computers she understands, building your own power generators, not so much.
But basically, preserving power means not using the washing facilities. There’s a lake, they’ve managed to rig up a line to hang the wet stuff from and it’s a warm summer, so it’s not as much of a chore as it could be. The boys still moan, or at least Jack does. Henry doesn’t have the attention span quite yet to be trusted washing anything, he just tags along because one of his parents is normally present. And it means splashing around in water.
Such are the simple joys of a three year old.
Garcia envies him a little. For Henry this is all just a prolonged holiday. He doesn’t understand the tension that runs between the adults every so often, or why Jack gets frustrated with being stuck in the camp. It’s an adventure for him.
They manage to catch up with the slight backlog of washing. It rained for a few days, and cabin three seemed to be trying to create as much washing, in as short a period as possible. Thankfully, neither of the boys spotted any of the rather questionable stains, having discovered that Uncle Spencer’s socks were fairly effective fishing lures. They’ve covered the length of the line in damp cloth by the time they hear a car approaching the camp.
Garcia and Jessica herd Jack between them, while JJ gathers Henry into her arms and they do their best to fade into the bushes, keeping out of sight of the road, waiting for an all clear from one of the boys. It’s likely that it’s the others back from their trip, but they can’t be sure and it’s better to be safe than sorry. They haven’t seen a single person in the two months they’ve been living in the camp, but they still keep watch, as best they can.
Rossi comes for them, his face giving nothing away, and that only makes Garcia worry more. Profilers hiding things never signals anything good, that much she knows, and if the look on Jessica’s face is anything to go by, she’s learned the same. They walk slowly, the boys in the middle of the four of them, and Garcia feels the dread building. She wants, even honestly considers turning and heading back to the lake. Just five more minutes of enjoying the peace of the lake, not thinking about whatever bad thing has happened outside of their little bubble.
She sees Hotch first, standing near the edge of the car park, his eyes scanning the treeline. He straightens impossibly as he catches sight of Jack, the ghost of a smile on his lips. It makes Garcia’s chest ache. All her boss man ever seems to do is put up masks to protect other people, to make them feel better. She wonders what will happen when he can’t do that anymore.
Morgan moves into sight, a black eye starting to blossom, his shoulders tense, with Will just a few feet behind. Garcia quickens her pace, aware of JJ doing the same. There’s blood in Will’s hair and on the cuff of Hotch’s shirt and they haven’t seen Emily yet.
They reach the car park just in time to see Emily step out of the main cabin, her hair damp, wearing different clothes than she was wearing before. Garcia hurries past the boys, she needs to feel Emily, to make sure she’s ok.
They were gone for less than six hours, but Emily has come back with new ghosts in her eyes, and the boys are wearing theirs. Six hours isn’t long enough to have gotten very far, not long enough for them to have made it back home. Garcia pulls Emily into a hug, aware of JJ doing the same to Will behind, little Henry clinging to his parents’ legs.
There’s a long moment before Garcia pulls back, wiping at her cheeks, and letting Emily pull her towards the cabin, the footsteps of the others following behind loud in the silence. Reid and Kevin have grouped the benches together in a circle, the two of them sitting close together, paler than they’ve looked for a while. Garcia slows a little, glancing back over her shoulder; she hasn’t seen JJ’s car, she’s not sure she wants to, but, they must have.
There are times when curiosity really is a bad thing, instead of a good thing.
She forces herself to keep walking, crossing the room to settle against Kevin’s side, letting him slip an arm around her back as Morgan sat on the bench next to her, his shoulder pressed against hers. She notices how, once they’ve all settled, Hotch is the only one not touching anyone else. Ever the one of the outside.
It takes a moment before Morgan shifts a little, glancing towards Hotch before beginning to speak. It takes a little over half an hour for the four of them, each offering only a few short sentences in turn, as though they’re giving a profile, to tell them all what happened.
Garcia is aware of the tears running down her cheeks, and the solid muscle of Morgan’s arm on her one side, while Kevin shudders on her other side. JJ has curled onto Will, her feet nestled on Reid’s lap. Rossi has claimed a hand each of the women on either side of him. Jack has Henry huddled up against him, leaning back against his father’s legs.
She can’t believe they hadn’t thought to make sure that the boys wouldn’t hear that. They shouldn’t have heard it. Shouldn’t ever have been in the situation to hear something like that.
It’s then, watching Jack’s solemn little face and Henry’s puzzled expression, that she makes her choice. From what they’ve just heard, they can’t stay here much longer. They don’t have the supplies to last too much longer and it isn’t safe for them to travel too much outside of the camp to scavenge for supplies. They can’t guard the camp, there’s too many directions that people could approach from, and not enough cover.
She’s heard Morgan listing off all of the problems with their position, and she knows her team well enough to know that it’s true. It’s the reason Hotch paces more than he sleeps, that Emily is always sitting near a window.
They can’t stay here anymore.
She curls up on the bottom bunk of one of the beds in the cabin she, Morgan, and Kevin have claimed, her laptop across her knees. She connects to the internet, opens a chat window and waits.
There are other people out there, somewhere, she knows, she hopes. People she cares about almost as much as her team. People that she knows can help her find a way to keep her family safe.
It’s almost two hours before a message appears, bearing a familiar screen name. It’s joined a little while later by another. It takes them less than two hours to hash out a plan, one that will keep their families safe. None of them asks what the others have been through in the time since they last spoke. They have to focus on other things.
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part four: Hardison
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