Psychosis

Chapter 24- Flood

Isabel sat on her bed, staring at the window, watching the rain come down. She could hear the hail hitting the window, and wondered what was happening to the missing girl. Was she being kept outside? Was she safe? Was the Unsub just going to throw her outside and let the hail take care of her? Then again, maybe it wasn't storming wherever the girl was being kept. She pulled out her laptop, and looked up the weather radar and sighed. The storm was huge. Unless the Unsub was keeping the girl far away from where they were, she could be victim to the storm. Isabel just hoped she was okay, and that they would find her before the Unsub took her out.

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Hotch watched as Reid led Ciara out of the police station, before looking around at the rest of his team. They were still a little shaken up after what had happened, especially Prentiss and JJ. Slowly, though, everyone got back to what they were doing before, which was trying to figure out anything they could about the Unsub. Rossi looked over at Hotch and came up to him.

"I know that look on your face. What are you thinking of?" Rossi asked.

"Were we too quick in deciding to let Ciara on the team? What if this job is too much for her?"

"What makes you question yourself?"

"She just had a psychotic break, David. Without an obvious trigger. What if this happens every case we are on?" Hotch asked, and Rossi shook his head.

"You told me when she was being transferred that she had a good handle on her psychosis? That she was able to control it?"

"Yeah. I thought she could."

"You know that the mind is a strange thing, Aaron. We all know this. Her mind wants to fall out of reality, but she's not letting it. That has to put an insane amount of stress and strain on her mind. It's like a dam, her mind is right now. The psychosis is the water, and she's holding it all back," Rossi reasons.

"But?"

"But there's a crack. There's always a crack in her psyche, no matter how much she's trying to deny it, and that's an object of her past. But when she controls her psychosis, it all builds up behind the dam, and eventually the crack can't handle the strain, and it all bursts open, and out comes the flood," Rossi finished, and Hotch knew he was right. But that didn't tell him what to do about it.

"I thought that we weren't supposed to profile the other members of the team?" Morgan chimed in from the other side of the room.

"He's right, you know," Prentiss added.

"I think Ciara might need it, though," JJ said.

"Thank you, JJ," Hotch said, before turning back to Rossi. "So what do we do? This break took her out for an entire day, and she took Reid with her, too."

"You told him to go with her." Hotch looked at Rossi, before sighing. Rossi smiled slightly, before looking at the wall that Ciara had been staring at earlier. "We can't do anything until we get back to Quantico. Once we get back, I think we need to get Ciara into therapy. Whatever happened to her has shattered her psyche, and she can't even begin to put the pieces back together without help. And while we are all experts in psychology, we aren't counselors. That's what she needs right now. Maybe she can learn other ways to deal with her psychosis. The point is, she needs to talk to someone."