fic post: preface our altered existence (Hotch/Prentiss)
Title: preface our altered existence
Characters: Emily Prentiss, Aaron Hotchner
Rating: pg-13
Summary: A life torn apart through departure is not so easily repaired.
Author’s Note: word count - 1,484. Spoilers Lauren (6x18) through season 7. angst_bingo fill for the prompt "Hello Again"
The first thing she notices when she wakes up is someone’s holding her hand. She opens her eyes slowly, and ignores the throbbing in her head as she looks to her left.
“Hey”. Her voice is gravely, weak. “Hotch”. But it’s enough to get him to look up, to meet her eyes. “What happened? Doyle, did you get-?” Her voice doesn’t hold out for her to finish.
She feels his grip on her hand tighten and his eyes look down to where their fingers intertwine. “Emily… I’m so sorry. He-“
The sound of her deep inhale makes him falter.
“He got away. He was gone before we got there.”
She’s looking straight ahead now, avoiding his gaze. She’s so close to losing it because she knows if Doyle’s not dead, there’s one option. She’s got one choice.
His hand strokes her cheek, prompting her to look his way again. He wants her to look in his eyes, this much she knows. Because if he’s about to say what she thinks, he’s going to take the blame for it. She can grant him this.
She blinks, more rapidly now, and studies his face. Anything to distract from this - this reality. Her new life.
“Emily, I’m so sorry.” His voice is steady, but soft. His eyes watery, the muscles in his face desperately fighting to keep some semblance of control. “When the surgeon told me you were going to make it, I made the call. The team.. they all think you died. JJ, she knows too.”
She knew it was coming but the reality hits her hard. And before she can stop herself, she’s crying, silently, but that doesn’t stop the tracks of tears down her cheeks and the shaking of her body as she tries and fails to get enough air.
Hotch leans over, her hands still in his, and presses a kiss to their intertwined fingers and stills there.
This is how they say goodbye.
- -
She tries to stifle the rising panic she feels as she hangs up with Tom. The worst thing about this is the lack of information. Declan’s been taken. That’s all she knows, and that’s all she’ll know until she arrives stateside.
She’s been living light since her death, whatever clothing and items she can fit in a small duffel bag. Quickly she gathers up the rest of her essentials and exits the apartment for the last time.
She tries not to think about the last time she stepped out the door of her old apartment in DC, and the events that followed that changed everything in indeterminable ways.
Passing through the windowless hallway and down the stairwell, she pulls out one of her burn phones and dials a number from memory.
She hits send before she has the time to consider her actions, because if she does, chances are she won’t make this call. And even though he knows she’s alive - he was the one who set this plan in motion - she’s apprehensive. It’s hard to even think about the team being within reach because they were forbidden for so long.
Unsung rule number one: It’s too dangerous to make contact.
Number two: Don’t think about the team unless you want reminded how utterly alone you are.
But now, fuck the rules, she’s on her way back.
He answers just as she’s stepping out onto the open side walk. “Hotchner.”
“Hotch, hi.” She readjusts the bag on her shoulder.
“Emily, - I”, there’s a note of surprise in his voice.
She interrupts before he can finish. “I got a call. Declan’s been taken.” It’s been a long time since he’s heard her voice, and she hopes that alone is enough to camouflage the slight waver in it.
“I know, I was about to call. You’re coming back then?” He’s over the initial shock and it’s almost like she’s still on the team calling him in the middle of a case to check in.
Except there’s just short of 4,000 miles, seven months, and weight of this secret they share between them.
She’s grateful he doesn’t tell her it’ll be okay, because there are no guarantees here and she can’t focus on an outcome right now. Just action - doing everything in her power to get Declan home safe.
“Yeah, I’m on my way. I have to go.”
There’s silence for a beat. Then, “See you soon Prentiss.” It’s warm, sweet even, and she can’t stop the corners of her mouth from shifting slightly upwards. He has to know she’s terrified about what awaits her when she gets to DC. And this is his way of indicating support.
“I’ll call you when I land.” Normally she’d drop the phone in the nearest trash can to avoid being traced. But today marks the end of hiding - of evading detection.
Today Emily Prentiss is the closest to alive she’s been in months.
- -
She goes to his apartment the night before she’s due to return to the BAU for the first time since she pushed through those glass doors in one last attempt to protect her them. Since she walked out of their lives.
She smiles softly as he opens the door though it’s Hotch who speaks first, “Hey.”
“Hi. I just.. I wanted to see how you’re holding up.” She’s shifting on her feet now. “How’s Jack?”
“Actually, he’s at Hershey Park with Jessica this weekend.”
“Oh.” She looks down as she says it, down at the nails she’s been trying so hard not to pick, but failing.
“Come in, Emily.”
She tries not to look at him again until they’re both seated on his couch. She’s antsy. It doesn’t take a profiler to notice she’s uncomfortable.
Finally she looks to his face. Eyes searching his features. Assessing. “Hotch, I just.. I know keeping this secret couldn’t have been easy. And.. I wanted to thank you.”
For just a second she sees a flash of something cross his face. Almost as soon as she notices it, it’s gone. His hand reaches to meet hers resting on her thigh before he starts, “Prentiss. Emily. Don’t -” He pauses, breathing in sharply. “I did what I had to do. What you would have done for any one of us. And I’d do it again.”
She nods. Of course she knows exactly what he means. All the sacrifices she made over these last few months, she made them for the team. To protect them. For the same reasons Hotch made the calls he did. To pronounce her dead, and keep the team in the dark.
There wasn’t - isn’t - anything she wouldn’t do to insure their safety. This is something they share.
She can feel the warmth of his hand grazing the material of her pants warming her skin. She thinks about how she wishes he would have let her be this present for him after Foyet attacked him. The thought of him going through all that utterly alone hits her and it’s painful with it’s weight. Because with the exception of this moment right here, that’s her reality.
She turns to face him, and when his hand slips slightly inward she stills it there before he pulls it away out of propriety to let him know this is exactly what she wants.
Nothing between them has ever been traditional. Theirs is a relationship built on instinct, and now understanding.
Keeping this secret was something they had to do. And when she leans towards him and brushes her lips against his, she knows: This too, is something they must to do.
- -
She enters the BAU more nervous than she was on her first day 6 years ago. She wouldn’t have thought that’s possible if she wasn’t feeling it this very instant. But the thing she wants more than anything is ultimately still the same: Acceptance.
Except this time she’s not meeting a group of strangers, she’s seeing her team - her family - for the first time since the majority of them mourned her death. They grieved for her, vowed revenge for her.
She’s thought about what the waiting room of that hospital in Boston felt like the night she died too many times. The way each of their faces must have transitioned from worry to the slightest bit of hope - to despair. She can’t go there now.
Keeping her back straight and her jaw set she walks past her friends’ empty desks in the bull pin to the conference room.
Barely crossing the threshold, she stops. She’s just in time to see the immediate aftereffects of Hotch’s confession that she’s alive plastered on the faces of these people she cares for more deeply than she ever thought she would anyone.
Of all the things she knows - this one is most true: Everything has changed. Some in ways damaged beyond repair.