Child of Autumn (Part I)
Title: Child of Autumn
Category: Fairytale/Drama/Angst/Romance
Rating: FRM
Pairing: Morgan/Prentiss
Summary: As if her life wasn't really fucking complicated already...all she needed was a pair of wings and to be at the centre of an interspecies war.
Author's Note: AU. Written for the cm_bigbang. Accompanying artwork created by the epically awesome sarah_jones can be seen HERE.
Emily held up a hand to knock at Hotch's door, then stopped. What the hell was she thinking? She was just going to walk right in there and say, 'Oh, by the way, Hotch, I think I might be a faerie...' Yeah, that would go over real well. And then he would promptly have her undergo intense psychological evaluation.
No, this was probably just about the worst idea she'd ever had. Maybe she was really just entirely crazy for having even begun to place any faith in the word of an UNSUB claiming to be a kelpie.
But then, what other explanation was there for what she'd seen? People didn't just change into green-skinned horses that could talk, then disappear into the river... And it would explain why he’d drowned fifteen young girls.
She took another deep breath and once again lifted her hand to knock. She'd been trying to work up the courage to tell him what was on her mind for the last two days and this was the farthest she'd gotten. 'Just do it!' she told herself, 'Quit being a chicken and just knock!'
“Come in,” Hotch called, before she'd even realized she was actually knocking. And her fight or flight response immediately kicked in, telling her to just ding dong ditch.
“Is this a bad time, sir?” she asked, half hoping it was. But she knew that if he sent her away, she'd likely never get this far again.
“What's on your mind?” he asked, gesturing to the seat across from his desk.
With a defeated breath, she sank down into the chair and stared at a point on the wall just over his shoulder, trying to find some words that wouldn't make her sound like a complete and total nutcase. “I... I was just thinking about something the UNSUB said to me when I took him down.
He raised a brow. “I don't think I've read your arrest report yet...” He shuffled a few papers on his desk, looking for it. “What did he say?”
“Well...I don't know, maybe he was suffering some kind of delusion. But he started a diatribe about something called the Unseelie Court and faeries.” She didn't want him to think she was actually buying into that nonsense, so it came off sounding like a question. “He seemed to think that I would somehow understand what he was talking about - he kept referring to me as if I were one of 'them'.”
Hotch said nothing for several long moments and she began to think he was about to laugh in her face. Faeries? Seriously? That had to be the most ridiculous thing she'd heard since she was five years old and stopped believing in stories like the Tooth Fairy.
Then, he stood up and walked over to the door, still remaining purposefully silent. Maybe he was going to kick her out of his office and tell her to stop wasting his time with nonsense.
She hadn't, however, been expecting him to lock the door and lower the curtains. “You're likely not going to believe me...but what he said wasn't nonsense. At least, not entirely.”
She raised a brow and gave a derisive snort of laughter. Okay, maybe this was all some kind of joke everyone was in on, no doubt the doing of Morgan who seemed to think it was funny to make her question her own sanity. But the look Hotch continued to give her was dead serious...well, more serious than usual.
“Faeries are real, though not in the way that everyone seems to picture. There is a whole other world of people humans know very little of - with races and conflicts and cultures completely separate from our own.”
“Come on, Hotch, you can't seriously expect me to...”
He ignored her disbelief. “Think back, Prentiss, things you can't explain have been happening around you as long as you can remember. Things that shouldn't be possible, that you dismissed as your imagination. It's not, though, it's faerie magic and you were the one responsible.”
She just sat there, rather dumbfounded. “So, how do you know this? Are you like...some kind of 'faerie'?” The tone of her voice, though, made it sound like she would sooner believe...just about anything else.
“A nix, actually,” he replied unphased, causing her jaw to hang open a little. “A water fae, reputed to have musical talent to charm mortal women.”
“So, this...UNSUB, kelpie, whatever was serious? What about what he said to me?”
Hotch pursed his lips. “I knew it when I first saw you...you were the first one I'd ever encountered. A changeling child.”
“You mean I was replaced at birth by some kind of faerie baby?” She practically laughed at the ridiculousness of the suggestion.
“No, you are the faerie baby. I don't know where the real, mortal Emily Prentiss is now, but I do know that you are not her. Your glamour is strong - whoever did it clearly did not want you to be found, for whatever reason - but I have the second sight and I could feel your magical energy right away.”
She stood up, nearly knocking over her chair in her agitation. “You're lying,” she shook her head, pacing the room, “Morgan told you to say all this, didn't he? You're feeding me some crock about faeries and magic and changelings, trying to get me to buy into it. Well, guess what, it's not working! I'm not that gullible - tell Morgan he's an ass.”
And with that, she stormed out of the room, furious at him for lying to her and furious at herself for almost believing him.
******
Emily felt like a kicked puppy as she marched herself back towards Hotch’s office. She had been so sure of herself, so convinced that she was right, that she’d seen right through their lame little joke when she had stormed out of his office the day before.
And now, she had to face him again and admit that maybe he was right. Maybe she was - God forbid - a faerie...
If she were being honest with herself, it made sense. Growing up, she had always felt like she didn’t belong, like there was something holding her back from fitting in. She had been painfully awkward; no matter what situation she was placed in, she never failed to stick out like a sore thumb. She had always blamed it on her mother for moving the family around so much that she never got the chance to properly socialize enough to fit in. But maybe Hotch was right - maybe she didn’t belong because she wasn’t one of them.
The acting out, the drinking, the drugs...all of it could be explained by a faerie girl trying to be a normal human teenager. She could no more do that than one could force a square peg into a round hole.
And yet...being a faerie, if that really was the truth of the matter, wasn’t going to magically make everything better. It was going to make things really freaking complicated.
She didn’t bother knocking this time, she had a feeling he was already expecting her to come crawling back, begging for his help. If there was one thing that she was not good at, it was admitting she was wrong.
“Sir, I’m sorry about the way I left things yesterday...” She immediately started off by apologizing, eyes focused on the floor. And then she stopped, because she really didn’t know what she was supposed to say next - she’d been rehearsing to get this far, she hadn’t even begun thinking about what came next.
He watched her standing there, shifting her weight from foot to foot in discomfort for a long moment and, if she didn’t know better, she would have said he seemed to enjoy her awkwardness. But he was Hotch and Aaron Hotchner didn’t gain satisfaction from watching his team cringe...or did he? Not twenty-four hours ago, he had admitted to her face that he was a faerie and, if her childhood storybooks had taught her anything, it was that faeries - even the most benevolent variety - loved playing innocent tricks on mortals.
Finally, he seemed to take pity on her. “You want to know everything,” he said simply. It was as good an explanation as any.
She shrugged noncommittally. “I still don’t understand how this happened - I can’t wrap my head around it... I’m a faerie - it’s, I don't know, I can’t compare it to anything...this is pretty much the most out in left field situation I could possibly come up with.”
******
“Whoa, whoa, whoa...” Emily said, holding up both hands to make the stream of words stop. “Back up the bus. I’m heir to the what?”
Hotch gave a grim little laugh as he used a napkin to wipe at the spot on his neatly pressed pants where the sip of coffee she had choked on now stained them.
Her cheeks flushed slightly as she bit her lip, hurriedly mopping up the spatter on the table. “I’m sorry, I just wasn’t expecting that.”
“It’s terrible for faerie stomachs anyway,” he dismissed, even as he wrapped a hand around his own cup of coffee. “As I was saying, you are the only heir to the Seelie - that’s the good faeries - Court.”
“So, if I’m ‘royalty’ or whatever, then why did they send me to live with humans? Wouldn’t they want to raise me themselves and teach me to rule or something?”
Hotch pursed his lips, inhaling slowly through his nose. “The thing is, you aren’t royal by blood. All the true heirs to the throne were killed when Queen Rhiannon waged war against the Unseelie demon minions and locked them away. The Thistlewitch, who is the oldest surviving Seelie faerie and wise in the divining arts, made a prophecy concerning the fate of the Seelie throne.”
“Faerie babies - a rare occurrence in and of itself - are, without exception, born in the spring when the world is anew with life. The Thistlewitch predicted the birth of a faerie as the last leaf fell - the Child of Autumn, as it were. And that this child would take the throne in the darkest hour and lead the people into a new era.”
Emily barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “I don’t know who this faerie is, but I’m definitely not her. I don’t lead anyone anywhere, let alone an entire people into battle...or out of it, I guess.”
“You weren’t the first person to scoff at the notion and dismiss it without second thought. Faeries simply weren’t born in the fall and year after year, it remained true. Until a hunting party returned, having found a swaddled newborn in the woods, left within the protection of a faerie ring, with only a protective talisman around its neck and a note pinned to its woven blanket. The note said that the mother had been shot by a hunter, mistaken for a deer and, unable to heal the wound because of the iron buckshot, she had cut the child from her stomach...”
She rubbed her temples as if trying to ward off a headache. She reached for her coffee which had long since been forgotten, not because she wanted a drink, rather for something to do apart from the urge to pull her hair out and hope to wake herself from this fucked up nightmare. She choked on the cold dregs and pulled a face as she swallowed the bitter liquid.
He continued on unphased, “The queen assigned me to your protection - I found the least suspect family with which to place you and took a job where I could keep you safe from any Unseelie scouts or other threats that might keep you from fulfilling the prophecy.”
Whatever she might have said in the silence that followed was interrupted by their names being called. Emily’s face visibly blanched and her coffee fell to the floor and pooled on the tile. “Derek...” she breathed.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him, but in the last few days since she’d learned her new identity, she’d found it hard to relate to any so-called ‘normal’ humans, partly for fear that she might accidentally let something slip and sound like she’d lost her mind. And with Morgan, with whom she used to spend more time with than anyone, it translated into a noticeable avoidance of sorts.
And she had a feeling he was starting to get worried, if not suspicious... Especially since she had been spending a lot of time with Hotch, the only other person who knew the truth.
******
“Em, hold up.”
Emily immediately froze upon hearing Morgan’s voice, dropping her keys to the concrete floor of the parking lot in her start. She felt her wings twitch in agitation beneath the thin film of her glamour - she wasn’t aware of those muscles unless she was concentrating, so when she was under stress, they seemed to act of their own freewill, even nearly tearing through her glamour once or twice. She momentarily considered continuing on as if she hadn’t heard him because she really just wasn’t in the mood at the moment. But he wasn’t blind and he certainly wasn’t stupid, he’d obviously seen her stop dead in her tracks...damn it, if only she could get the hang of shielding!
With a steadying breath, she reluctantly turned back to face him, flashing what she hoped was a friendly smile. “What’s up, Morgan?”
She had become so uncomfortable being around him lately that she’d just began avoiding him altogether, not just when it came to spending time together after work as friends, but gradually more and more when it came to interacting at work. The whole thing was just so stupid and she knew it. It had all started out innocently enough - and that was when she hadn’t believed any of it - but now that she’d been forced to accept that it was all true, she was pretty sure that if she told him now, it would just completely blow up in her face.
Morgan jogged the short distance still separating them, pausing far enough away from her that there was a palpable and awkward disconnect. He stared at her for a moment, taking in her tight smile and clear discomfort at being caught alone with him. His heart clenched and he had to look away, under the guise of checking to make sure that they were very much alone.
He lowered his voice as he asked, “Girl, did I do something wrong? You’ve been acting like I’m some kind of leper...”
She’d been avoiding him for weeks - since that case where she’d been left to face that UNSUB on her own. At first, he’d told himself that she was genuinely busy...she was an Ambassador’s daughter, afterall, and she was always complaining about how many functions her mother wanted her to attend. But slowly, as he caught snippets of conversations that he clearly wasn’t meant to hear, it became obvious that she really wasn’t as busy as she wanted him to think.
Then it had dawned on him...while Emily no longer seemed to have any time for him, she always had time for Hotch. Lately, they were always paired off together on cases - the way he used to be paired with her. He had tried very hard to brush off those creeping vines of jealousy slowly beginning to grow around the subject; he told himself that if the boss wanted to work more closely with Emily, there must be a perfectly reasonable and professional reason.
But his attempts to keep his imagination in check were slowly starting to crack under the pressure, giving way to the thought that maybe they were having an affair...
Hotch wouldn’t do that, though...would he? Hotch lived by the rules like they were going out of style, he was the last person who would defy the anti-fraternization policy. That flat out intolerance of intra-team romances was why, for the last year, Morgan had gone against every instinct in his body that told him to confess his growing feelings to his partner.
That - and the fact that Emily was easily one of his closest friends and the healthiest relationship he’d ever had with a member of the opposite sex kept him from pouring his heart out to her and risk screwing it all up. But all of a sudden, that relationship was just...gone.
She’d stopped talking to him, stopped joking around and flirting with him, stopped spending time with him - she went out of her way to make up flimsy excuses as to why she couldn’t even grab coffee with him. Hell, they barely even worked together in any sense more than proximity.
Again, he told himself there had to be a logical explanation for the way she was treating him - Emily was the farthest thing from cruel, she was one of the sweetest people he’d ever known. He must have said or done something that had really upset her, enough to cause her to ask Hotch to separate them...he just couldn’t figure out what it could possibly be.
He tried not to pressure her, to give her some space to let whatever injury he’d caused heal...but he missed her friendship and would end up falling back on his old way and ask her to hang out again. And again, she’d look him in the face and lie.
Today, though, had been the last straw... He’d seen her out at lunch with JJ, laughing as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She just looked so happy when he saw her through the window and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to just ease back into her life. But when he’d knocked on the glass and waved, she’d instantly tensed up and given him that awkward smile she seemed to reserve solely for him, the one he was getting right now.
Why didn’t she just stab him in the gut and get it over with?
Whatever this was, it obviously wasn’t just going to go away on its own. Which is why he’d followed her out here to ask point blank what it was.
The seconds ticked past as she remained stock still, except for the way her mouth repeatedly opened and closed like a fish out of water. She was panicking, despite the fact that she’d known he would sooner or later confront her about their situation - she’d become so adept at avoiding him one-on-one that she’d started to feel almost invincible, thinking she could keep this conversation at bay for a few months, at least, until she better understood her situation.
But she sure as hell wasn’t about to talk now, ambushed in the middle of the freaking FBI parking garage. She had no idea what to say, short of lying to him yet again...and she really, really didn’t want to do that.
When she failed to come up with any words, she could clearly see the pain and confusion written on his face. It made that awful feeling bubble up in her stomach - almost like iron sickness, but not quite - but she just didn’t know what to say. Never in her life had she been so paralyzed by indecision - she could hurt him with silence or hurt him with words... That was a pretty damn awful decision, if you asked her.
Physically, they may have been separated by mere inches of concrete floor, but for all the distance between them, they might as well have been on opposite sides of the Earth. More than anything, she wanted to just shout it out at the top of her lungs, quick and...well, not painless, but at least it would be out in the open.
‘I’m a faerie - a pixie to be specific. I was secretly exchanged at birth with the real Emily Prentiss to be raised by humans because I’m the heir to the Seelie Court throne and could control the Unseelie fae if I were to return and take power, which is why I was ordered killed as an infant. And now that I know my real identity, I’ve become the target of a faerie hit squad. Oh, and Hotch is actually a faerie too and he’s teaching me how to use my powers so that I can escape from the evil faeries intent on spilling my blood so they can remain free forever...’
She heard it all in her head - and wanted more than anything to let it out - but she just stood there like a deer in the headlights.
‘Just say something,’ she screamed in her head, ‘ANYTHING!’
She cleared her throat. “Morgan, I... I...” But her nerves failed her and she took the coward’s way out, lying yet again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The words came out easily, like it was the most natural thing in the world, but the moment they hit the air, it was clear that she couldn’t have said anything worse had she tried.
Morgan had always been an open book with her and she could easily read the flash of pain in his eyes. He looked down for what seemed an eternity...when he eventually looked back up, his eyes were glistening. It struck her then that she’d never actually seen him cry before.
His voice was hoarse as he said, “You know, Emily, I thought we were friends... But it’s clear that I’ve done something to upset you and I would think that if our friendship meant anything at all to you, that you would tell me what it was so that I could fix it somehow. But obviously...”
Emily felt the tears pooling in her eyes, mirroring his. She cut him off, “We are friends, Morgan!” Then a little more desperately, “We are!” Frantically trying to make amends for her last mistake, she reached for his hand and...ended up lying again, “You’re my best friend!”
Even if it had been said with the best of intentions, her thoughtless words were just a mockery of what they’d once had - he’d been the first person to reach out and befriend her when she’d joined the team and felt like a complete outsider, he made her feel like a part of the team...a part of the family. Before Hotch had trusted her, before JJ and Garcia and Reid had accepted her, Morgan had called her his partner.
And she’d repaid that kindness by treating him like crap these last few weeks...
It broke her heart as her words caused him to flinch and pull his hand out of her reach. He raised a hand in a silent gesture to stop. “Please, don’t.” He shut his eyes. “Just...don’t.”
He felt so stupid for deciding to do this at work! Here he was, on the verge of tears, about to break down completely, and anyone could walk past and see them. Why did it feel like he was breaking up with a woman he wasn’t even dating?
He swallowed the lump that had caught in his throat, giving way for the anger to rise. “I can’t believe after all these weeks of avoiding me and lying to me, that you’re going to stand there and pretend we’re still,” he mimed air quotes as he said scornfully, “Best friends.” He glared frostily. “Whatever the hell that means.”
Tears started to run down her ghostly pale cheeks and it tore him up inside, but he squashed it down and continued on with what he desperately needed to say because he was hurt and pissed off and he couldn’t keep it inside any longer.
“You took away your friendship without one thought as to how it might make me feel.” She opened her mouth, as if to contradict him, but he wasn’t about to give her that chance. He shook his head angrily. “No, Em, you didn’t want to talk before, so now it’s my turn - I get to say my piece and you just listen.”
She choked back a sob. “Okay...”
He might have been practically livid with her, but he still couldn’t stand to see her crying like this and he had to stare past her as he spoke. “It would be one thing if you were acting strangely with everyone, but it’s clearly just me that you have a problem with. And if you can’t even be honest enough - no, if you don’t even care enough - to tell that to my face, then...” His breath hitched. “I don’t know where that leaves us.”
He knew that the tears were going to start falling any second and he couldn’t let her - or the security cameras - see him fall apart, so he didn’t give her a chance to respond, turning on his heel and scaling the stairs two at a time.
Emily’s voice broke as she called after him, “Derek, please! Wait! I’m sorry!” She covered her face with her hands; she’d really fucked things up now... She wanted to follow him, but if she couldn’t talk to him before, how was she supposed to now? It was clear to her now just how deeply she’d wounded him.
And after lying to him about literally her entire life for so long, it wasn’t going to do damn bit of good. It was going to make everything so much worse...and she didn’t even know how that was possible at this point. Even if she could somehow fumble her way through the conversation, she wasn’t sure it would fix anything.
Maybe she had damaged her relationship with Morgan beyond repair...
******
Emily stared at herself in the mirror, kneading her cheeks with the pads of her fingers. It didn’t feel any different, even though it looked as though it should feel permanently slick, covered in water like a dolphin...a deep, mossy green dolphin.
She dropped her hands so that they rested on the edge of the sink, leaning her head down as she felt a dry heave wrack her entire body. Staring down at her hands, her eerily long fingers, she found them horrifying...she didn’t know why one extra joint made them seem so inhuman, but it did.
Her arms were shaking - the overwhelming combined smells of cleaners and cosmetics forming some kind of dizzying fog within the confined space of the small bathroom were clouding her mind and making her feel sick to her stomach. A feeling that wasn’t helped by the feeling of what she assumed to be wings clinging to her back, wet and sticky, like soggy newspaper.
She hadn’t yet gotten a good look at her new wings - not least in part to the fact that she just couldn’t handle any more weirdness right now. When the glamour down her back had split, some kind of protective fluid had spilled out and trickled down her spine, like she imagined might happen as a butterfly broke out of a cocoon. She’d tried to move them at first, but she had utterly no idea what muscles, if any, controlled them - all she’d managed to produce was a pitiful little wet smack of one wing flopping back from the slight twitch she’d produced.
The sound and the unpleasant feel had literally caused her to retch and it felt as if her entire body were trying to invert itself. She had nothing in her stomach but the dregs of last night’s hangover and she could taste every stale drop of ethanol as it came back up; when she washed out her mouth directly from the tap, she could taste the fluoride additives and the metal impurities from the pipes that had carried it.
Last night’s drinking had largely been driven partly by wanting to forget about her fight with Morgan and partly by resentment towards Hotch telling her what to do concerning her faerie identity. And as drinking often does, it had driven her to recklessness. She had gone down to the derelict little gully that sometimes flooded after a rain, but mostly ran dry, making it a popular hang out for wayward teenagers to do their drinking.
Some of the ‘faerie chatter’ she’d started listening to on the internet said that gully was a favorite hang-out of local solitary faeries...maybe because even if they happened to be spotted by a mortal, they’d likely be so intoxicated they would have no memory of the encounter in the morning.
She’d brushed away some of the glass shards that lined the barren embankment like a half-hearted mosaic and sat and waited. Tonight, the valley was cut by a weak stream, like someone had sprayed it with a hose.
And as she sat there, waiting for something - though, she had no idea what - to happen, egg shells began to float past, some small like a hummingbird’s, some as large as a chicken’s, spinning and bobbing like little boats lost amid the pitiful excuse for a current.
She didn’t look directly at the haggard woman sitting beside her, blowing the viscous insides from the eggs and breaking them in half before sending them afloat. Glancing from the corners of her eyes so as not to alarm the witch, Emily watched her inspect each egg shell as if it contained the secrets of the universe.
“The spirits have a secret for you too, Pixie,” the woman spoke at length, holding out a speckled brown egg. But her fingers were clumsy and awkward, good for pulling triggers, not delicate subtle gesticulations. Her secret was lost to little confetti-like bits of shell dusting the surface of the water.
It wasn’t what she’d come for, though, and afterwards, the witch told her the secret to seeing her ‘true self’...or maybe she’d only imagined it all in a drunken haze. Either way, she’d ended up rolling among the overgrown grass outside her apartment complex, hoping that somewhere amidst the clover was one to undo her enchantment.
That was how she got here, to be staring at a green face in the mirror, staring into eyes as black as her hair, using senses strong enough to pick apart the individual smells from the kitchen garbage down the hall...she knew she was looking at herself, but she was kind of hoping she was still a little drunk.
******
Emily knew Hotch wasn’t happy that, against his advice, she’d taken off her glamour - it didn’t take a profiler to see it. But she was stubborn and refused to be apologetic. At least he’d taken pity on her enough to keep her paired off with him the entire case, not wanting anyone else to see the effects of her iron sickness or, God forbid, a tear in her glamour.
They sat in the SUV, a fuming silence emanating between them - not the usual thoughtful, stoic silence that went along with the mood of a case, but the silence of an argument in stalemate.
And while she understood that he wasn’t trying to control her, he was trying to keep her safe - he’d made it perfectly clear just how dangerous faeries could be - she was never one to be told what to do. Who was he to tell her that she wasn’t allowed to look at her true form? If she wanted to see what lay beneath her glamour, she was damn well going to do it and screw what Hotch - or anyone else - had to say on the matter.
But apparently, she hadn’t entirely thought it through; the part about the glamour protecting her from iron seemed to have slipped her mind last night...and she was definitely feeling that mistake now.
She leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window, hoping to vanquish the feeling that someone had stuck her head in a paint shaker. She was just waiting to hear Hotch’s satisfied voice tell her that he’d told her so...not that she would ever admit that she had been wrong.
Her vision started to swim and she was pretty sure she could feel every blood vessel in her head pulsating - it wasn’t a particularly settling feeling. The tang of iron in the air of the confined space burned at her lungs, eating away at her newly sensitive tissue. It was only a matter of time before her glamour failed altogether, sloughing off like so much dead skin.
“Pull over,” she demanded.
“What?” Hotch asked, concerned, looking over at her with a raised brow.
“Pull over!” It came off a little harsher than she would have ever dared speak to her boss in any other situation, but she didn’t really have the ability to care right now...her primary concern was not blacking out.
He changed lanes, still watching her white-knuckling the dashboard as if she were concerned about falling out of her seat. “Are you alright?”
She didn’t answer him, already stumbling onto the median before the car had even reached a complete stop. She coughed and gagged, sounding very much like her stomach were attempting an escape. Muffled curses accompanied her pained groans...iron sickness was not a pretty thing to witness, even worse to experience.
“Not to rub salt in your wounds,” Hotch spoke up quietly, “But this would...”
“God, shut up, Hotch!” Emily snapped. “You were right, okay? Is that what you want to hear? Either help me fix my glamour or get back in the damn car.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, squatting back on her heels.
“Feeling better?” he asked lightly, not sure if she was about to bite his head off again. “You should have said you weren’t feeling well.”
“This fucking sucks,” she muttered, leaning her head back against the door panel, “I think my stomach just turned inside out.”
He offered her his hand to help her to her feet, but she shook her head, not trusting her legs to support her weight at the moment. Her hands were shaky as she brushed her hair away from her face and she shut her eyes against the intense glare of the sun. She felt very exposed, she was weak and she knew it.
Hotch was getting antsy as they sat so exposed at the side of the road; he wasn’t exactly expecting to be caught in an Unseelie ambush in the middle of the city, first thing in the morning...but he hadn’t become Special Agent in Charge by letting his guard down. He could hold his own if someone should come upon them, but knowing the faeries likely to be looking for Emily, even if they were both armed, Emily was in no position to use magic...they might as well be wearing bright red bullseyes.
“Get in the car,” he urged, “We’ll find a gas station or some place to stop and I’ll fix your glamour, but we can’t stay here...”
“This is all your fault,” she told him, narrowing her eyes, “I blame you for this. I was perfectly happy not knowing and you come in and tell me all this shit about faeries and now I’m puking my guts out at the side of the road... It would’ve been kinder to just shoot me.” She stared darkly at him as she awkwardly attempted to crawl back into the front seat.
Category: Fairytale/Drama/Angst/Romance
Rating: FRM
Pairing: Morgan/Prentiss
Summary: As if her life wasn't really fucking complicated already...all she needed was a pair of wings and to be at the centre of an interspecies war.
Author's Note: AU. Written for the cm_bigbang. Accompanying artwork created by the epically awesome sarah_jones can be seen HERE.
Emily held up a hand to knock at Hotch's door, then stopped. What the hell was she thinking? She was just going to walk right in there and say, 'Oh, by the way, Hotch, I think I might be a faerie...' Yeah, that would go over real well. And then he would promptly have her undergo intense psychological evaluation.
No, this was probably just about the worst idea she'd ever had. Maybe she was really just entirely crazy for having even begun to place any faith in the word of an UNSUB claiming to be a kelpie.
But then, what other explanation was there for what she'd seen? People didn't just change into green-skinned horses that could talk, then disappear into the river... And it would explain why he’d drowned fifteen young girls.
She took another deep breath and once again lifted her hand to knock. She'd been trying to work up the courage to tell him what was on her mind for the last two days and this was the farthest she'd gotten. 'Just do it!' she told herself, 'Quit being a chicken and just knock!'
“Come in,” Hotch called, before she'd even realized she was actually knocking. And her fight or flight response immediately kicked in, telling her to just ding dong ditch.
“Is this a bad time, sir?” she asked, half hoping it was. But she knew that if he sent her away, she'd likely never get this far again.
“What's on your mind?” he asked, gesturing to the seat across from his desk.
With a defeated breath, she sank down into the chair and stared at a point on the wall just over his shoulder, trying to find some words that wouldn't make her sound like a complete and total nutcase. “I... I was just thinking about something the UNSUB said to me when I took him down.
He raised a brow. “I don't think I've read your arrest report yet...” He shuffled a few papers on his desk, looking for it. “What did he say?”
“Well...I don't know, maybe he was suffering some kind of delusion. But he started a diatribe about something called the Unseelie Court and faeries.” She didn't want him to think she was actually buying into that nonsense, so it came off sounding like a question. “He seemed to think that I would somehow understand what he was talking about - he kept referring to me as if I were one of 'them'.”
Hotch said nothing for several long moments and she began to think he was about to laugh in her face. Faeries? Seriously? That had to be the most ridiculous thing she'd heard since she was five years old and stopped believing in stories like the Tooth Fairy.
Then, he stood up and walked over to the door, still remaining purposefully silent. Maybe he was going to kick her out of his office and tell her to stop wasting his time with nonsense.
She hadn't, however, been expecting him to lock the door and lower the curtains. “You're likely not going to believe me...but what he said wasn't nonsense. At least, not entirely.”
She raised a brow and gave a derisive snort of laughter. Okay, maybe this was all some kind of joke everyone was in on, no doubt the doing of Morgan who seemed to think it was funny to make her question her own sanity. But the look Hotch continued to give her was dead serious...well, more serious than usual.
“Faeries are real, though not in the way that everyone seems to picture. There is a whole other world of people humans know very little of - with races and conflicts and cultures completely separate from our own.”
“Come on, Hotch, you can't seriously expect me to...”
He ignored her disbelief. “Think back, Prentiss, things you can't explain have been happening around you as long as you can remember. Things that shouldn't be possible, that you dismissed as your imagination. It's not, though, it's faerie magic and you were the one responsible.”
She just sat there, rather dumbfounded. “So, how do you know this? Are you like...some kind of 'faerie'?” The tone of her voice, though, made it sound like she would sooner believe...just about anything else.
“A nix, actually,” he replied unphased, causing her jaw to hang open a little. “A water fae, reputed to have musical talent to charm mortal women.”
“So, this...UNSUB, kelpie, whatever was serious? What about what he said to me?”
Hotch pursed his lips. “I knew it when I first saw you...you were the first one I'd ever encountered. A changeling child.”
“You mean I was replaced at birth by some kind of faerie baby?” She practically laughed at the ridiculousness of the suggestion.
“No, you are the faerie baby. I don't know where the real, mortal Emily Prentiss is now, but I do know that you are not her. Your glamour is strong - whoever did it clearly did not want you to be found, for whatever reason - but I have the second sight and I could feel your magical energy right away.”
She stood up, nearly knocking over her chair in her agitation. “You're lying,” she shook her head, pacing the room, “Morgan told you to say all this, didn't he? You're feeding me some crock about faeries and magic and changelings, trying to get me to buy into it. Well, guess what, it's not working! I'm not that gullible - tell Morgan he's an ass.”
And with that, she stormed out of the room, furious at him for lying to her and furious at herself for almost believing him.
******
Emily felt like a kicked puppy as she marched herself back towards Hotch’s office. She had been so sure of herself, so convinced that she was right, that she’d seen right through their lame little joke when she had stormed out of his office the day before.
And now, she had to face him again and admit that maybe he was right. Maybe she was - God forbid - a faerie...
If she were being honest with herself, it made sense. Growing up, she had always felt like she didn’t belong, like there was something holding her back from fitting in. She had been painfully awkward; no matter what situation she was placed in, she never failed to stick out like a sore thumb. She had always blamed it on her mother for moving the family around so much that she never got the chance to properly socialize enough to fit in. But maybe Hotch was right - maybe she didn’t belong because she wasn’t one of them.
The acting out, the drinking, the drugs...all of it could be explained by a faerie girl trying to be a normal human teenager. She could no more do that than one could force a square peg into a round hole.
And yet...being a faerie, if that really was the truth of the matter, wasn’t going to magically make everything better. It was going to make things really freaking complicated.
She didn’t bother knocking this time, she had a feeling he was already expecting her to come crawling back, begging for his help. If there was one thing that she was not good at, it was admitting she was wrong.
“Sir, I’m sorry about the way I left things yesterday...” She immediately started off by apologizing, eyes focused on the floor. And then she stopped, because she really didn’t know what she was supposed to say next - she’d been rehearsing to get this far, she hadn’t even begun thinking about what came next.
He watched her standing there, shifting her weight from foot to foot in discomfort for a long moment and, if she didn’t know better, she would have said he seemed to enjoy her awkwardness. But he was Hotch and Aaron Hotchner didn’t gain satisfaction from watching his team cringe...or did he? Not twenty-four hours ago, he had admitted to her face that he was a faerie and, if her childhood storybooks had taught her anything, it was that faeries - even the most benevolent variety - loved playing innocent tricks on mortals.
Finally, he seemed to take pity on her. “You want to know everything,” he said simply. It was as good an explanation as any.
She shrugged noncommittally. “I still don’t understand how this happened - I can’t wrap my head around it... I’m a faerie - it’s, I don't know, I can’t compare it to anything...this is pretty much the most out in left field situation I could possibly come up with.”
******
“Whoa, whoa, whoa...” Emily said, holding up both hands to make the stream of words stop. “Back up the bus. I’m heir to the what?”
Hotch gave a grim little laugh as he used a napkin to wipe at the spot on his neatly pressed pants where the sip of coffee she had choked on now stained them.
Her cheeks flushed slightly as she bit her lip, hurriedly mopping up the spatter on the table. “I’m sorry, I just wasn’t expecting that.”
“It’s terrible for faerie stomachs anyway,” he dismissed, even as he wrapped a hand around his own cup of coffee. “As I was saying, you are the only heir to the Seelie - that’s the good faeries - Court.”
“So, if I’m ‘royalty’ or whatever, then why did they send me to live with humans? Wouldn’t they want to raise me themselves and teach me to rule or something?”
Hotch pursed his lips, inhaling slowly through his nose. “The thing is, you aren’t royal by blood. All the true heirs to the throne were killed when Queen Rhiannon waged war against the Unseelie demon minions and locked them away. The Thistlewitch, who is the oldest surviving Seelie faerie and wise in the divining arts, made a prophecy concerning the fate of the Seelie throne.”
“Faerie babies - a rare occurrence in and of itself - are, without exception, born in the spring when the world is anew with life. The Thistlewitch predicted the birth of a faerie as the last leaf fell - the Child of Autumn, as it were. And that this child would take the throne in the darkest hour and lead the people into a new era.”
Emily barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “I don’t know who this faerie is, but I’m definitely not her. I don’t lead anyone anywhere, let alone an entire people into battle...or out of it, I guess.”
“You weren’t the first person to scoff at the notion and dismiss it without second thought. Faeries simply weren’t born in the fall and year after year, it remained true. Until a hunting party returned, having found a swaddled newborn in the woods, left within the protection of a faerie ring, with only a protective talisman around its neck and a note pinned to its woven blanket. The note said that the mother had been shot by a hunter, mistaken for a deer and, unable to heal the wound because of the iron buckshot, she had cut the child from her stomach...”
She rubbed her temples as if trying to ward off a headache. She reached for her coffee which had long since been forgotten, not because she wanted a drink, rather for something to do apart from the urge to pull her hair out and hope to wake herself from this fucked up nightmare. She choked on the cold dregs and pulled a face as she swallowed the bitter liquid.
He continued on unphased, “The queen assigned me to your protection - I found the least suspect family with which to place you and took a job where I could keep you safe from any Unseelie scouts or other threats that might keep you from fulfilling the prophecy.”
Whatever she might have said in the silence that followed was interrupted by their names being called. Emily’s face visibly blanched and her coffee fell to the floor and pooled on the tile. “Derek...” she breathed.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him, but in the last few days since she’d learned her new identity, she’d found it hard to relate to any so-called ‘normal’ humans, partly for fear that she might accidentally let something slip and sound like she’d lost her mind. And with Morgan, with whom she used to spend more time with than anyone, it translated into a noticeable avoidance of sorts.
And she had a feeling he was starting to get worried, if not suspicious... Especially since she had been spending a lot of time with Hotch, the only other person who knew the truth.
******
“Em, hold up.”
Emily immediately froze upon hearing Morgan’s voice, dropping her keys to the concrete floor of the parking lot in her start. She felt her wings twitch in agitation beneath the thin film of her glamour - she wasn’t aware of those muscles unless she was concentrating, so when she was under stress, they seemed to act of their own freewill, even nearly tearing through her glamour once or twice. She momentarily considered continuing on as if she hadn’t heard him because she really just wasn’t in the mood at the moment. But he wasn’t blind and he certainly wasn’t stupid, he’d obviously seen her stop dead in her tracks...damn it, if only she could get the hang of shielding!
With a steadying breath, she reluctantly turned back to face him, flashing what she hoped was a friendly smile. “What’s up, Morgan?”
She had become so uncomfortable being around him lately that she’d just began avoiding him altogether, not just when it came to spending time together after work as friends, but gradually more and more when it came to interacting at work. The whole thing was just so stupid and she knew it. It had all started out innocently enough - and that was when she hadn’t believed any of it - but now that she’d been forced to accept that it was all true, she was pretty sure that if she told him now, it would just completely blow up in her face.
Morgan jogged the short distance still separating them, pausing far enough away from her that there was a palpable and awkward disconnect. He stared at her for a moment, taking in her tight smile and clear discomfort at being caught alone with him. His heart clenched and he had to look away, under the guise of checking to make sure that they were very much alone.
He lowered his voice as he asked, “Girl, did I do something wrong? You’ve been acting like I’m some kind of leper...”
She’d been avoiding him for weeks - since that case where she’d been left to face that UNSUB on her own. At first, he’d told himself that she was genuinely busy...she was an Ambassador’s daughter, afterall, and she was always complaining about how many functions her mother wanted her to attend. But slowly, as he caught snippets of conversations that he clearly wasn’t meant to hear, it became obvious that she really wasn’t as busy as she wanted him to think.
Then it had dawned on him...while Emily no longer seemed to have any time for him, she always had time for Hotch. Lately, they were always paired off together on cases - the way he used to be paired with her. He had tried very hard to brush off those creeping vines of jealousy slowly beginning to grow around the subject; he told himself that if the boss wanted to work more closely with Emily, there must be a perfectly reasonable and professional reason.
But his attempts to keep his imagination in check were slowly starting to crack under the pressure, giving way to the thought that maybe they were having an affair...
Hotch wouldn’t do that, though...would he? Hotch lived by the rules like they were going out of style, he was the last person who would defy the anti-fraternization policy. That flat out intolerance of intra-team romances was why, for the last year, Morgan had gone against every instinct in his body that told him to confess his growing feelings to his partner.
That - and the fact that Emily was easily one of his closest friends and the healthiest relationship he’d ever had with a member of the opposite sex kept him from pouring his heart out to her and risk screwing it all up. But all of a sudden, that relationship was just...gone.
She’d stopped talking to him, stopped joking around and flirting with him, stopped spending time with him - she went out of her way to make up flimsy excuses as to why she couldn’t even grab coffee with him. Hell, they barely even worked together in any sense more than proximity.
Again, he told himself there had to be a logical explanation for the way she was treating him - Emily was the farthest thing from cruel, she was one of the sweetest people he’d ever known. He must have said or done something that had really upset her, enough to cause her to ask Hotch to separate them...he just couldn’t figure out what it could possibly be.
He tried not to pressure her, to give her some space to let whatever injury he’d caused heal...but he missed her friendship and would end up falling back on his old way and ask her to hang out again. And again, she’d look him in the face and lie.
Today, though, had been the last straw... He’d seen her out at lunch with JJ, laughing as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She just looked so happy when he saw her through the window and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to just ease back into her life. But when he’d knocked on the glass and waved, she’d instantly tensed up and given him that awkward smile she seemed to reserve solely for him, the one he was getting right now.
Why didn’t she just stab him in the gut and get it over with?
Whatever this was, it obviously wasn’t just going to go away on its own. Which is why he’d followed her out here to ask point blank what it was.
The seconds ticked past as she remained stock still, except for the way her mouth repeatedly opened and closed like a fish out of water. She was panicking, despite the fact that she’d known he would sooner or later confront her about their situation - she’d become so adept at avoiding him one-on-one that she’d started to feel almost invincible, thinking she could keep this conversation at bay for a few months, at least, until she better understood her situation.
But she sure as hell wasn’t about to talk now, ambushed in the middle of the freaking FBI parking garage. She had no idea what to say, short of lying to him yet again...and she really, really didn’t want to do that.
When she failed to come up with any words, she could clearly see the pain and confusion written on his face. It made that awful feeling bubble up in her stomach - almost like iron sickness, but not quite - but she just didn’t know what to say. Never in her life had she been so paralyzed by indecision - she could hurt him with silence or hurt him with words... That was a pretty damn awful decision, if you asked her.
Physically, they may have been separated by mere inches of concrete floor, but for all the distance between them, they might as well have been on opposite sides of the Earth. More than anything, she wanted to just shout it out at the top of her lungs, quick and...well, not painless, but at least it would be out in the open.
‘I’m a faerie - a pixie to be specific. I was secretly exchanged at birth with the real Emily Prentiss to be raised by humans because I’m the heir to the Seelie Court throne and could control the Unseelie fae if I were to return and take power, which is why I was ordered killed as an infant. And now that I know my real identity, I’ve become the target of a faerie hit squad. Oh, and Hotch is actually a faerie too and he’s teaching me how to use my powers so that I can escape from the evil faeries intent on spilling my blood so they can remain free forever...’
She heard it all in her head - and wanted more than anything to let it out - but she just stood there like a deer in the headlights.
‘Just say something,’ she screamed in her head, ‘ANYTHING!’
She cleared her throat. “Morgan, I... I...” But her nerves failed her and she took the coward’s way out, lying yet again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The words came out easily, like it was the most natural thing in the world, but the moment they hit the air, it was clear that she couldn’t have said anything worse had she tried.
Morgan had always been an open book with her and she could easily read the flash of pain in his eyes. He looked down for what seemed an eternity...when he eventually looked back up, his eyes were glistening. It struck her then that she’d never actually seen him cry before.
His voice was hoarse as he said, “You know, Emily, I thought we were friends... But it’s clear that I’ve done something to upset you and I would think that if our friendship meant anything at all to you, that you would tell me what it was so that I could fix it somehow. But obviously...”
Emily felt the tears pooling in her eyes, mirroring his. She cut him off, “We are friends, Morgan!” Then a little more desperately, “We are!” Frantically trying to make amends for her last mistake, she reached for his hand and...ended up lying again, “You’re my best friend!”
Even if it had been said with the best of intentions, her thoughtless words were just a mockery of what they’d once had - he’d been the first person to reach out and befriend her when she’d joined the team and felt like a complete outsider, he made her feel like a part of the team...a part of the family. Before Hotch had trusted her, before JJ and Garcia and Reid had accepted her, Morgan had called her his partner.
And she’d repaid that kindness by treating him like crap these last few weeks...
It broke her heart as her words caused him to flinch and pull his hand out of her reach. He raised a hand in a silent gesture to stop. “Please, don’t.” He shut his eyes. “Just...don’t.”
He felt so stupid for deciding to do this at work! Here he was, on the verge of tears, about to break down completely, and anyone could walk past and see them. Why did it feel like he was breaking up with a woman he wasn’t even dating?
He swallowed the lump that had caught in his throat, giving way for the anger to rise. “I can’t believe after all these weeks of avoiding me and lying to me, that you’re going to stand there and pretend we’re still,” he mimed air quotes as he said scornfully, “Best friends.” He glared frostily. “Whatever the hell that means.”
Tears started to run down her ghostly pale cheeks and it tore him up inside, but he squashed it down and continued on with what he desperately needed to say because he was hurt and pissed off and he couldn’t keep it inside any longer.
“You took away your friendship without one thought as to how it might make me feel.” She opened her mouth, as if to contradict him, but he wasn’t about to give her that chance. He shook his head angrily. “No, Em, you didn’t want to talk before, so now it’s my turn - I get to say my piece and you just listen.”
She choked back a sob. “Okay...”
He might have been practically livid with her, but he still couldn’t stand to see her crying like this and he had to stare past her as he spoke. “It would be one thing if you were acting strangely with everyone, but it’s clearly just me that you have a problem with. And if you can’t even be honest enough - no, if you don’t even care enough - to tell that to my face, then...” His breath hitched. “I don’t know where that leaves us.”
He knew that the tears were going to start falling any second and he couldn’t let her - or the security cameras - see him fall apart, so he didn’t give her a chance to respond, turning on his heel and scaling the stairs two at a time.
Emily’s voice broke as she called after him, “Derek, please! Wait! I’m sorry!” She covered her face with her hands; she’d really fucked things up now... She wanted to follow him, but if she couldn’t talk to him before, how was she supposed to now? It was clear to her now just how deeply she’d wounded him.
And after lying to him about literally her entire life for so long, it wasn’t going to do damn bit of good. It was going to make everything so much worse...and she didn’t even know how that was possible at this point. Even if she could somehow fumble her way through the conversation, she wasn’t sure it would fix anything.
Maybe she had damaged her relationship with Morgan beyond repair...
******
Emily stared at herself in the mirror, kneading her cheeks with the pads of her fingers. It didn’t feel any different, even though it looked as though it should feel permanently slick, covered in water like a dolphin...a deep, mossy green dolphin.
She dropped her hands so that they rested on the edge of the sink, leaning her head down as she felt a dry heave wrack her entire body. Staring down at her hands, her eerily long fingers, she found them horrifying...she didn’t know why one extra joint made them seem so inhuman, but it did.
Her arms were shaking - the overwhelming combined smells of cleaners and cosmetics forming some kind of dizzying fog within the confined space of the small bathroom were clouding her mind and making her feel sick to her stomach. A feeling that wasn’t helped by the feeling of what she assumed to be wings clinging to her back, wet and sticky, like soggy newspaper.
She hadn’t yet gotten a good look at her new wings - not least in part to the fact that she just couldn’t handle any more weirdness right now. When the glamour down her back had split, some kind of protective fluid had spilled out and trickled down her spine, like she imagined might happen as a butterfly broke out of a cocoon. She’d tried to move them at first, but she had utterly no idea what muscles, if any, controlled them - all she’d managed to produce was a pitiful little wet smack of one wing flopping back from the slight twitch she’d produced.
The sound and the unpleasant feel had literally caused her to retch and it felt as if her entire body were trying to invert itself. She had nothing in her stomach but the dregs of last night’s hangover and she could taste every stale drop of ethanol as it came back up; when she washed out her mouth directly from the tap, she could taste the fluoride additives and the metal impurities from the pipes that had carried it.
Last night’s drinking had largely been driven partly by wanting to forget about her fight with Morgan and partly by resentment towards Hotch telling her what to do concerning her faerie identity. And as drinking often does, it had driven her to recklessness. She had gone down to the derelict little gully that sometimes flooded after a rain, but mostly ran dry, making it a popular hang out for wayward teenagers to do their drinking.
Some of the ‘faerie chatter’ she’d started listening to on the internet said that gully was a favorite hang-out of local solitary faeries...maybe because even if they happened to be spotted by a mortal, they’d likely be so intoxicated they would have no memory of the encounter in the morning.
She’d brushed away some of the glass shards that lined the barren embankment like a half-hearted mosaic and sat and waited. Tonight, the valley was cut by a weak stream, like someone had sprayed it with a hose.
And as she sat there, waiting for something - though, she had no idea what - to happen, egg shells began to float past, some small like a hummingbird’s, some as large as a chicken’s, spinning and bobbing like little boats lost amid the pitiful excuse for a current.
She didn’t look directly at the haggard woman sitting beside her, blowing the viscous insides from the eggs and breaking them in half before sending them afloat. Glancing from the corners of her eyes so as not to alarm the witch, Emily watched her inspect each egg shell as if it contained the secrets of the universe.
“The spirits have a secret for you too, Pixie,” the woman spoke at length, holding out a speckled brown egg. But her fingers were clumsy and awkward, good for pulling triggers, not delicate subtle gesticulations. Her secret was lost to little confetti-like bits of shell dusting the surface of the water.
It wasn’t what she’d come for, though, and afterwards, the witch told her the secret to seeing her ‘true self’...or maybe she’d only imagined it all in a drunken haze. Either way, she’d ended up rolling among the overgrown grass outside her apartment complex, hoping that somewhere amidst the clover was one to undo her enchantment.
That was how she got here, to be staring at a green face in the mirror, staring into eyes as black as her hair, using senses strong enough to pick apart the individual smells from the kitchen garbage down the hall...she knew she was looking at herself, but she was kind of hoping she was still a little drunk.
******
Emily knew Hotch wasn’t happy that, against his advice, she’d taken off her glamour - it didn’t take a profiler to see it. But she was stubborn and refused to be apologetic. At least he’d taken pity on her enough to keep her paired off with him the entire case, not wanting anyone else to see the effects of her iron sickness or, God forbid, a tear in her glamour.
They sat in the SUV, a fuming silence emanating between them - not the usual thoughtful, stoic silence that went along with the mood of a case, but the silence of an argument in stalemate.
And while she understood that he wasn’t trying to control her, he was trying to keep her safe - he’d made it perfectly clear just how dangerous faeries could be - she was never one to be told what to do. Who was he to tell her that she wasn’t allowed to look at her true form? If she wanted to see what lay beneath her glamour, she was damn well going to do it and screw what Hotch - or anyone else - had to say on the matter.
But apparently, she hadn’t entirely thought it through; the part about the glamour protecting her from iron seemed to have slipped her mind last night...and she was definitely feeling that mistake now.
She leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window, hoping to vanquish the feeling that someone had stuck her head in a paint shaker. She was just waiting to hear Hotch’s satisfied voice tell her that he’d told her so...not that she would ever admit that she had been wrong.
Her vision started to swim and she was pretty sure she could feel every blood vessel in her head pulsating - it wasn’t a particularly settling feeling. The tang of iron in the air of the confined space burned at her lungs, eating away at her newly sensitive tissue. It was only a matter of time before her glamour failed altogether, sloughing off like so much dead skin.
“Pull over,” she demanded.
“What?” Hotch asked, concerned, looking over at her with a raised brow.
“Pull over!” It came off a little harsher than she would have ever dared speak to her boss in any other situation, but she didn’t really have the ability to care right now...her primary concern was not blacking out.
He changed lanes, still watching her white-knuckling the dashboard as if she were concerned about falling out of her seat. “Are you alright?”
She didn’t answer him, already stumbling onto the median before the car had even reached a complete stop. She coughed and gagged, sounding very much like her stomach were attempting an escape. Muffled curses accompanied her pained groans...iron sickness was not a pretty thing to witness, even worse to experience.
“Not to rub salt in your wounds,” Hotch spoke up quietly, “But this would...”
“God, shut up, Hotch!” Emily snapped. “You were right, okay? Is that what you want to hear? Either help me fix my glamour or get back in the damn car.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, squatting back on her heels.
“Feeling better?” he asked lightly, not sure if she was about to bite his head off again. “You should have said you weren’t feeling well.”
“This fucking sucks,” she muttered, leaning her head back against the door panel, “I think my stomach just turned inside out.”
He offered her his hand to help her to her feet, but she shook her head, not trusting her legs to support her weight at the moment. Her hands were shaky as she brushed her hair away from her face and she shut her eyes against the intense glare of the sun. She felt very exposed, she was weak and she knew it.
Hotch was getting antsy as they sat so exposed at the side of the road; he wasn’t exactly expecting to be caught in an Unseelie ambush in the middle of the city, first thing in the morning...but he hadn’t become Special Agent in Charge by letting his guard down. He could hold his own if someone should come upon them, but knowing the faeries likely to be looking for Emily, even if they were both armed, Emily was in no position to use magic...they might as well be wearing bright red bullseyes.
“Get in the car,” he urged, “We’ll find a gas station or some place to stop and I’ll fix your glamour, but we can’t stay here...”
“This is all your fault,” she told him, narrowing her eyes, “I blame you for this. I was perfectly happy not knowing and you come in and tell me all this shit about faeries and now I’m puking my guts out at the side of the road... It would’ve been kinder to just shoot me.” She stared darkly at him as she awkwardly attempted to crawl back into the front seat.