Fake Empire 8
Title: Fake Empire 8 (JJ goes off the deep end)
Author: Alsike
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss, other Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss
Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men or Criminal Minds. I owe wizened_cynic for the concept of quantum babies. She does it much better than me. Title stolen from the song by The National.
Apologies: LJ sux. Seriously, this would have been up last night, but no. First the rich text stops working like a month ago, so I learn html, and now the html editor has stopped working. soo, firefox it is. And lo, firefox does not help. FU LJ.
Fake Empire 1 (Queen Emma)
Fake Empire 2 (JJ's Part)
Fake Empire 3 (Emily's Part)
Fake Empire 4 (The Mansion)
Fake Empire 5 (Kyougen)
Fake Empire 6 (Morning)
Fake Emipire 7 (Mostly Emma's)
I never know if I'm hitting the right notes with this one. Feedback would be awesome. I'm trying to get everything set up for the ... Christmas Spectacular Episode... so you might be getting more wildly disjointed FE than you can handle. Hope that's alright.
X-Jet Air was so much better than commercial air, and in fact even better than BAU air, because Emily could let other people take the responsibility of looking out for Didi. And even if she fell out of the plane, Kurt could be trusted to catch her and bring her back. Emily leaned back in her seat, staring at the ceiling of the plane.
A woman with dark hair and odd glasses sat next to her. Ororo was up in the front, assisting with the flying. The strange woman was watching Emily with an oddly blank expression that was making her uncomfortable, but she would have been more uncomfortable telling her to stop, so she did her best to ignore it.
The woman made a small noise, almost a sigh of resignation, and sat back, seemingly loosing interest in her.
“Well?” She word shot out of Emily’s lips without her thinking about it, and she almost flushed with embarrassment as the woman raised an inquiring eyebrow. “You must have decided something. You want to tell me what?”
“It was merely that it was… typical of Emma.”
“What is typical of Emma?”
“To claim to be a hedonist, and then do what she ought rather than what she wants to do.”
Emily eyed her carefully.
“It was the same in the club. Only what she ought was different.”
The woman got up and walked towards the front of the plane. The way she moved was the clear clue: Hellfire.
* * *
It was late when they got in, and Emily got a cab rather than let Ororo fly them to their doorstep. Didi would never go to sleep after flying, and she didn’t need to be on balcony watch all night.
Deirdre fell asleep with her head in her lap in the taxi, and Emily threaded her fingers through her hair. The reality of it all was settling down on her. Nothing had really changed from the time they had left. She still had to do this on her own.
Didi was a heavy weight clinging to her neck as she hiked up the five flights of stairs. She shuffled her around, trying to find her keys, and Didi whined and started to cry.
“Just let me get in.”
“I want to sleep!”
Emily put her down to get the keys out of her bag and Didi started hitting her legs.
“Cut it out!”
“Pick me up!”
“I need to unlock the door! Then you can sleep in bed!”
Didi started to wail. Emily grit her teeth and ignored it, finally locating the keys, and desperately hoping that her neighbors weren’t calling the supervisor. The door opened onto a dark apartment. It was just… too much.
“Go in.”
“Carry me!”
“Go in!” Emily yelled. She couldn’t do this now. She couldn’t pretend to care anymore.
Deirdre looked horrified. She had stopped making noise, but tears were still running down her face. “You…” It was half confused, and half aghast. And Emily crumbled.
It didn’t have anything to do with her. Her anger and frustration were completely unrelated to this kid. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was only tired and unhappy exactly like Emily was. “I’m… I’m sorry.” She reached out to pick her up, but Didi avoided her arms and marched into the apartment under her own steam. It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did.
“Iz do it myself.”
She got undressed herself and stood, not looking at Emily, with one hand out, waiting for her pajamas. Emily dug in the suitcase until she found them.
“You sure you don’t want help.”
“Iz fine.”
She climbed into her clock pajamas without help.
“Teeth?”
Didi just gave her a dirty look and waited for a lift into bed. “Story.”
“Wait for me to get dressed.”
Deirdre heaved a small put-upon sigh and turned her head away in the pillow. Emily got into her own pajamas (which were still clean and folded from when she had put them in the suitcase) and went to brush her teeth. When she got back, Didi was asleep, and she crawled gingerly in, doing her best not to wake her.
Her cellphone was sitting on the bedside table and she stared at it for a long time.
She does what she ought rather than what she wants to do.
Emily closed her eyes. If she cried on the phone would it be enough to make it something Emma ought to do? But she wouldn’t. She had too much pride for that. And she didn’t want her here because Emily needed her. They were both martyrs, and she wasn’t going to make Emma feel that being with her was a sacrifice she needed to make.
She didn’t fall asleep for a long time, listening to Didi breathe, and wondering if JJ would just be able to know that she hadn’t made her brush her teeth, but she didn’t touch the phone. She didn’t even look at the phone. (She wanted to call her, but she couldn’t trust herself to be able to lie.)
* * *
It was the doorbell that woke them up that morning. A few bangs on the door followed. “Emily! Ororo said you had gone home!”
It was JJ.
“Shit!” Emily sat up, nearly knocking Didi out of bed. The child let out a yelp. “Hurry, you need to brush your teeth before JJ catches us!”
Didi’s eyes widened and she hurriedly made the jump from the edge of the bed to the floor. “Do the toothpaste.”
Emily fixed her toothbrush before answering the door where it sounded like JJ had decided to just lean on the bell.
“Hi.”
“Hi!” JJ bounced in. “Oh my god! This is going to be so much fun!”
Emily stared at JJ in horror. Was she possessed? “What do you mean by fun?”
“You have a kid! Most of Henry’s friends parents are nice and all, but when they ask you what you do and you say, ‘I profile serial killers’ they’re usually a bit put off.”
“I can see that.”
“But this is going to be perfect!”
“Oh god.” Emily had a sudden image of what might be going on in JJ’s head, and it was very very ugly (and suburban). “I don’t think… I’m going to be the type of parent that you want me to be.”
JJ just smiled, but her eyes were narrowed in a dangerous way. “Of course you will, with a little training.”
This was incredibly threatening.
JJ gave her a sharp look. “Are you hungover again?”
“No! We just got in late.”
“Good.” She stalked into Emily’s kitchen and started unloading bottles from the wine rack.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to be babysitting these for a little while.” She flashed a smile over her shoulder. “Just until you get more used to the idea.”
“You’re… what?” Emily wasn’t feeling entirely coherent yet. Didi came out of the bathroom dribbling foam.
“Lifts!”
Emily froze not sure which disaster she needed to deal with first. Finally she chose the soap and hurried to give Didi a lift so she could rinse her mouth. When she made it out JJ had located a cardboard box and was loading up the bottles. Emily flinched at every clink.
“Do you know how expensive some of those are!”
“Don’t worry!” JJ gave her that innocent smile which was incredibly not comforting. “You’ll get them back.” The smile changed into a sly grin. “Well, those that Will and I haven’t finished already.”
Emily gaped.
“You didn’t have nine months of no alcohol and no coffee.” JJ stuck her finger out at her. “You deserve some suffering.”
“What!”
* * *
“All right, it’s cute and all that you sleep in the same bed, but I think you need to figure out what’s going to be her room.”
JJ was going through the bags of clothing that Emma had bought Didi. Every once in a while she would squeal and pull Didi over to make her stand there while JJ held it in front of her to try and see how it would look.
“Her room?”
JJ pulled something red and slinky out of the bag and raised her eyebrows at Emily. “I think this is yours.” She tossed it and it hit Emily in the face.
Emily pulled it off and looked at it. “I didn’t-“ Then she figured out what it was and turned red.
JJ removed two jackets and something that she had to examine closely before she realized that it was a pair of leather pants. She gave Emily a look. “Were you involved in picking this stuff out?”
“I just tried on whatever she threw at me. It…” she waved her hands, “was less frustrating than arguing.”
JJ huffed air out her nose, and started a separate pile for Emily’s stuff. “So are you together or just…” her eyes slid over to Didi, coloring on the floor, and then back. “You know.”
Emily winced. “Is there a difference?”
“With you?” JJ rolled her eyes. “You just bend over and let her do whatever she wants to you.”
Emily shifted awkwardly. At least they could talk about this now. The last time they had had a similar conversation she hadn’t been able to sit down comfortably and JJ, when she finally figured it out, had flipped out and left. “Well, you never know how good it’s going to be until you bend over and let it happen.”
JJ snorted. “All right.” She stood up. “It’s time for shopping.”
“What?” Emily gestured futilely at the huge pile of clothes.
“For furniture. And then we call Will and get him to move stuff.”
* * *
JJ seemed to have forgotten to mention that moving furniture required two people, so Emily and Will dragged things around while she sat on the couch on her cell phone with Didi, who was having a nap.
Will had to get back to work and jogged down to his car as soon as they had finished.
“All right. I think I can get her into Henry’s preschool for next week, if she’s had all her shots. They didn’t happen to include immunization records when they dropped her off, did they.”
Emily rolled her eyes. “I don’t think even a birth certificate would have been accepted since it might have said something like ‘Father: grand duchess Emma Frost and Mother: slave number forty-two.”
JJ froze. “Slave?”
Emily glanced at her and blinked once. She had gotten so used to the idea that she had forgotten it might come as a shock. “Yeah… that was one of the things they found out about where she came from. When you said ‘mutant supremacist,’ you were right.”
JJ stiffened. “She forced you?”
Emily stared at her blankly. “Um, what?”
JJ jumped up from the couch and stalked towards her. “She forced you to carry her child?”
“I don’t think it was like that…”
JJ kept coming forward and Emily found herself backed against the wall. “You know that she’s like that, that she doesn’t have any respect for anyone else, and-”
“We were married?” Emily squeaked.
JJ stopped. “You were what?” She covered her mouth and stepped back. “No, don’t say it. I heard you.”
Emily scratched her head. “Are you going to puke?”
She swallowed. “No. I… I just am having a hard time trying to picture a situation with you two married with a baby and its…”
“Making you want to throw up.” Emily chuckled. “I would be incredibly offended if it weren’t so difficult to imagine myself.”
Part 9
* * *
Author: Alsike
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss, other Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss
Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men or Criminal Minds. I owe wizened_cynic for the concept of quantum babies. She does it much better than me. Title stolen from the song by The National.
Apologies: LJ sux. Seriously, this would have been up last night, but no. First the rich text stops working like a month ago, so I learn html, and now the html editor has stopped working. soo, firefox it is. And lo, firefox does not help. FU LJ.
Fake Empire 1 (Queen Emma)
Fake Empire 2 (JJ's Part)
Fake Empire 3 (Emily's Part)
Fake Empire 4 (The Mansion)
Fake Empire 5 (Kyougen)
Fake Empire 6 (Morning)
Fake Emipire 7 (Mostly Emma's)
I never know if I'm hitting the right notes with this one. Feedback would be awesome. I'm trying to get everything set up for the ... Christmas Spectacular Episode... so you might be getting more wildly disjointed FE than you can handle. Hope that's alright.
X-Jet Air was so much better than commercial air, and in fact even better than BAU air, because Emily could let other people take the responsibility of looking out for Didi. And even if she fell out of the plane, Kurt could be trusted to catch her and bring her back. Emily leaned back in her seat, staring at the ceiling of the plane.
A woman with dark hair and odd glasses sat next to her. Ororo was up in the front, assisting with the flying. The strange woman was watching Emily with an oddly blank expression that was making her uncomfortable, but she would have been more uncomfortable telling her to stop, so she did her best to ignore it.
The woman made a small noise, almost a sigh of resignation, and sat back, seemingly loosing interest in her.
“Well?” She word shot out of Emily’s lips without her thinking about it, and she almost flushed with embarrassment as the woman raised an inquiring eyebrow. “You must have decided something. You want to tell me what?”
“It was merely that it was… typical of Emma.”
“What is typical of Emma?”
“To claim to be a hedonist, and then do what she ought rather than what she wants to do.”
Emily eyed her carefully.
“It was the same in the club. Only what she ought was different.”
The woman got up and walked towards the front of the plane. The way she moved was the clear clue: Hellfire.
* * *
It was late when they got in, and Emily got a cab rather than let Ororo fly them to their doorstep. Didi would never go to sleep after flying, and she didn’t need to be on balcony watch all night.
Deirdre fell asleep with her head in her lap in the taxi, and Emily threaded her fingers through her hair. The reality of it all was settling down on her. Nothing had really changed from the time they had left. She still had to do this on her own.
Didi was a heavy weight clinging to her neck as she hiked up the five flights of stairs. She shuffled her around, trying to find her keys, and Didi whined and started to cry.
“Just let me get in.”
“I want to sleep!”
Emily put her down to get the keys out of her bag and Didi started hitting her legs.
“Cut it out!”
“Pick me up!”
“I need to unlock the door! Then you can sleep in bed!”
Didi started to wail. Emily grit her teeth and ignored it, finally locating the keys, and desperately hoping that her neighbors weren’t calling the supervisor. The door opened onto a dark apartment. It was just… too much.
“Go in.”
“Carry me!”
“Go in!” Emily yelled. She couldn’t do this now. She couldn’t pretend to care anymore.
Deirdre looked horrified. She had stopped making noise, but tears were still running down her face. “You…” It was half confused, and half aghast. And Emily crumbled.
It didn’t have anything to do with her. Her anger and frustration were completely unrelated to this kid. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was only tired and unhappy exactly like Emily was. “I’m… I’m sorry.” She reached out to pick her up, but Didi avoided her arms and marched into the apartment under her own steam. It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did.
“Iz do it myself.”
She got undressed herself and stood, not looking at Emily, with one hand out, waiting for her pajamas. Emily dug in the suitcase until she found them.
“You sure you don’t want help.”
“Iz fine.”
She climbed into her clock pajamas without help.
“Teeth?”
Didi just gave her a dirty look and waited for a lift into bed. “Story.”
“Wait for me to get dressed.”
Deirdre heaved a small put-upon sigh and turned her head away in the pillow. Emily got into her own pajamas (which were still clean and folded from when she had put them in the suitcase) and went to brush her teeth. When she got back, Didi was asleep, and she crawled gingerly in, doing her best not to wake her.
Her cellphone was sitting on the bedside table and she stared at it for a long time.
She does what she ought rather than what she wants to do.
Emily closed her eyes. If she cried on the phone would it be enough to make it something Emma ought to do? But she wouldn’t. She had too much pride for that. And she didn’t want her here because Emily needed her. They were both martyrs, and she wasn’t going to make Emma feel that being with her was a sacrifice she needed to make.
She didn’t fall asleep for a long time, listening to Didi breathe, and wondering if JJ would just be able to know that she hadn’t made her brush her teeth, but she didn’t touch the phone. She didn’t even look at the phone. (She wanted to call her, but she couldn’t trust herself to be able to lie.)
* * *
It was the doorbell that woke them up that morning. A few bangs on the door followed. “Emily! Ororo said you had gone home!”
It was JJ.
“Shit!” Emily sat up, nearly knocking Didi out of bed. The child let out a yelp. “Hurry, you need to brush your teeth before JJ catches us!”
Didi’s eyes widened and she hurriedly made the jump from the edge of the bed to the floor. “Do the toothpaste.”
Emily fixed her toothbrush before answering the door where it sounded like JJ had decided to just lean on the bell.
“Hi.”
“Hi!” JJ bounced in. “Oh my god! This is going to be so much fun!”
Emily stared at JJ in horror. Was she possessed? “What do you mean by fun?”
“You have a kid! Most of Henry’s friends parents are nice and all, but when they ask you what you do and you say, ‘I profile serial killers’ they’re usually a bit put off.”
“I can see that.”
“But this is going to be perfect!”
“Oh god.” Emily had a sudden image of what might be going on in JJ’s head, and it was very very ugly (and suburban). “I don’t think… I’m going to be the type of parent that you want me to be.”
JJ just smiled, but her eyes were narrowed in a dangerous way. “Of course you will, with a little training.”
This was incredibly threatening.
JJ gave her a sharp look. “Are you hungover again?”
“No! We just got in late.”
“Good.” She stalked into Emily’s kitchen and started unloading bottles from the wine rack.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to be babysitting these for a little while.” She flashed a smile over her shoulder. “Just until you get more used to the idea.”
“You’re… what?” Emily wasn’t feeling entirely coherent yet. Didi came out of the bathroom dribbling foam.
“Lifts!”
Emily froze not sure which disaster she needed to deal with first. Finally she chose the soap and hurried to give Didi a lift so she could rinse her mouth. When she made it out JJ had located a cardboard box and was loading up the bottles. Emily flinched at every clink.
“Do you know how expensive some of those are!”
“Don’t worry!” JJ gave her that innocent smile which was incredibly not comforting. “You’ll get them back.” The smile changed into a sly grin. “Well, those that Will and I haven’t finished already.”
Emily gaped.
“You didn’t have nine months of no alcohol and no coffee.” JJ stuck her finger out at her. “You deserve some suffering.”
“What!”
* * *
“All right, it’s cute and all that you sleep in the same bed, but I think you need to figure out what’s going to be her room.”
JJ was going through the bags of clothing that Emma had bought Didi. Every once in a while she would squeal and pull Didi over to make her stand there while JJ held it in front of her to try and see how it would look.
“Her room?”
JJ pulled something red and slinky out of the bag and raised her eyebrows at Emily. “I think this is yours.” She tossed it and it hit Emily in the face.
Emily pulled it off and looked at it. “I didn’t-“ Then she figured out what it was and turned red.
JJ removed two jackets and something that she had to examine closely before she realized that it was a pair of leather pants. She gave Emily a look. “Were you involved in picking this stuff out?”
“I just tried on whatever she threw at me. It…” she waved her hands, “was less frustrating than arguing.”
JJ huffed air out her nose, and started a separate pile for Emily’s stuff. “So are you together or just…” her eyes slid over to Didi, coloring on the floor, and then back. “You know.”
Emily winced. “Is there a difference?”
“With you?” JJ rolled her eyes. “You just bend over and let her do whatever she wants to you.”
Emily shifted awkwardly. At least they could talk about this now. The last time they had had a similar conversation she hadn’t been able to sit down comfortably and JJ, when she finally figured it out, had flipped out and left. “Well, you never know how good it’s going to be until you bend over and let it happen.”
JJ snorted. “All right.” She stood up. “It’s time for shopping.”
“What?” Emily gestured futilely at the huge pile of clothes.
“For furniture. And then we call Will and get him to move stuff.”
* * *
JJ seemed to have forgotten to mention that moving furniture required two people, so Emily and Will dragged things around while she sat on the couch on her cell phone with Didi, who was having a nap.
Will had to get back to work and jogged down to his car as soon as they had finished.
“All right. I think I can get her into Henry’s preschool for next week, if she’s had all her shots. They didn’t happen to include immunization records when they dropped her off, did they.”
Emily rolled her eyes. “I don’t think even a birth certificate would have been accepted since it might have said something like ‘Father: grand duchess Emma Frost and Mother: slave number forty-two.”
JJ froze. “Slave?”
Emily glanced at her and blinked once. She had gotten so used to the idea that she had forgotten it might come as a shock. “Yeah… that was one of the things they found out about where she came from. When you said ‘mutant supremacist,’ you were right.”
JJ stiffened. “She forced you?”
Emily stared at her blankly. “Um, what?”
JJ jumped up from the couch and stalked towards her. “She forced you to carry her child?”
“I don’t think it was like that…”
JJ kept coming forward and Emily found herself backed against the wall. “You know that she’s like that, that she doesn’t have any respect for anyone else, and-”
“We were married?” Emily squeaked.
JJ stopped. “You were what?” She covered her mouth and stepped back. “No, don’t say it. I heard you.”
Emily scratched her head. “Are you going to puke?”
She swallowed. “No. I… I just am having a hard time trying to picture a situation with you two married with a baby and its…”
“Making you want to throw up.” Emily chuckled. “I would be incredibly offended if it weren’t so difficult to imagine myself.”
Part 9
* * *