Fic: Five Times Emily Prentiss Compartmentalized (And One Time She Wished She Hadn't)
Title: Five Times Emily Prentiss Compartmentalized (And One Time She Wished She Hadn’t)
Rating: PG13/FRT
Characters/Pairings: Prentiss-centric, gen
Warnings: spoilers for “Minimal Loss;” case violence, character death
Summary: “How come none of this gets to you?”
Author’s Note: Thanks to my lovey beta lady_of_scarlet ^_^
1. There
Greece was lovely; everyone told her so. They told her that she would love living there, that it would be like a dream. They asked wasn’t she so excited, wasn’t she so thrilled, wasn’t she so lucky.
Emily knew that there were times when adults ask you questions because they want you to tell them something, and there were times when they asked because they want to tell you something, and she knew this was the second kind of question. She smiled and nodded and said that Greece sounded so wonderful she could hardly wait. It was a familiar routine by now; although admittedly when people had told her how wonderful Russia was, there had been significantly less talk of beaches.
The only one who protested Ambassador Prentiss’ reassignment was Gregor’s little girl Anya, who sniffed and asked who was going to play with her now? None of the embassy children closer to Emily’s own age seemed particularly surprised or hurt to hear that she was moving, and Emily expected no less. They knew by now that diplomats and ambassadors came and went, and so did their children, and it did little good to get attached. Anya was only a little younger than Emily had been when she first realized this, and she too would figure it out soon.
Emily’s technique still required some perfection, though. Just a few short years later she found herself silently wishing her family could stay in Greece. It was, after all, lovely. But they all told her that she would love Saudi Arabia. It really was such an amazing place, and wasn’t she going to learn a lot? Emily would rather stay in Greece and explore the ruins and learn how to take out a fishing boat; but they were telling her, not asking her, so she smiled and practiced her Arabic and said that it sounded like an interesting change.
2. Away
It was a clear bright day, a little too hot to do anything but sit in the shade with a book and a glass of lemonade, but there was too much work to be done around the cottage to enjoy that sort of luxury. Instead, Emily was on her hands and knees in the vegetable garden, ignoring the soreness in her back and the sun beating down on her neck. Weeding was not her favorite chore.
She and her grandfather had been working in silence for several minutes, but when Emily paused to wipe sweat from her forehead and tie her hair back, she could tell he had something on his mind.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Everything is fine with me,” he answered. “But I wonder about you. I love having you around, don’t get me wrong, but it’s been a long time since you visited, and this was all rather short-notice.”
Emily had expected the question, but she had been enjoying the last week and the freedom not to think about it. “Sorry about that.”
Her apology was waved off. “Your father said you were having some kind of boy trouble.”
She sighed. “Something like that.” It hurt to hear her problems trivialized that way, painted in such rosy colors, but she had no one to blame but herself. She had chosen the innocent phrase because it was easier than explaining to her parents why she had really wanted to spend some time abroad.
The ambassador had warned her against running away from her problems, telling her she wasn’t a child any longer and she couldn’t hide from the world. Her father, thankfully, had just said that a bit of a vacation never hurt anyone.
Emily wasn’t sure that she would call her stay in France a vacation, exactly, because as much as she loved the woods and the solitude and her grandfather, it was painful to watch the old man fading away. Even now, pulling weeds next to her, his motions were slow and jerky, his breathing uneven.
She wished he would let her finish the weeding by herself, but she couldn’t ask him to go inside and sit around doing nothing, not when he’d rather be working in the garden - or helping her with her own problems.
“You know, if some boy broke your heart, he’s a fool,” her grandfather told her. “And he’s not worth worrying about.”
Emily’s smile was bittersweet. She wished it were something so innocent as a broken heart that had prompted her time out of the States. “I know,” she told him. “I just need a little time to forget about him.”
He patted her shoulder sympathetically. “Take all the time you need.” He smiled and added teasingly, “After we’ve finished with the garden.”
3. After
Emily hadn’t seen the gun, not really. She had seen a revolver with one round in it - and if she had seen it, Reid most certainly had, too. She knew that, just as surely as she knew how weak and ashamed he felt right now, avoiding her gaze and trying to act as though she weren’t sitting just across from him, watching him closely.
Despite the fact that she’d been anticipating this exchange for hours, racking her brains to find the best words, she still had no idea of what she was going to say. She was still finding her footing after everything - the beating, Jessica’s death, the heart stopping fear that Morgan and Reid hadn’t gotten out in time - and as she tried to choose her words carefully, she was aware of just how thin she was spread.
They needed to have this conversation, though, and she thought it best to try now, before this could gnaw on Reid’s mind any longer.
“I need you to listen to me.” She’d never meant anything more in her life, because Reid had to listen, closely enough to hear the words that she couldn’t find. She didn’t know how to make him accept that it wasn’t his fault. The team had told him - maybe he’d even tried telling himself that - but the message hadn’t gotten through. And why should it? It would not have occurred to him - would never occur to him - that she had been the selfish one.
Emily had already seen him die once, when he had been…a colleague, a sweet guy, sure, but still a stranger in so many ways. How much worse would it have been now, when he was like a brother to her? Seeing him stretched out on the floor, not moving, not breathing, would have hurt far worse than anything Cyrus could have done to her. And in her desire, her need, to spare herself that pain, she had knowingly placed the burden of guilt on Reid’s already strained shoulders.
It hurt now, looking in Reid’s eyes and seeing his disbelief; she swallowed her disappointment and distress, forcing a smile, because it seemed that she couldn’t make him let this go, couldn’t take back the load she had forced onto him. Maybe she should have given him more time. Maybe there simply wasn’t anything she could to do make it better, and she’d let her pride or her hatred for feeling powerless fool her into thinking otherwise.
But he spared her one more glance, cutting her thoughts short and running his thumb gently over her hand. It wasn’t much - a small, tentative gesture - but from a man who avoided so much physical contact, it meant more than anything he could have said. He even smiled at her, warmly enough to elicit another smile from her, a genuine one this time. She knew that things weren’t fixed yet, but for now she just let herself bask in this single, simple moment.
4. Outside
“There’s been some kind of mistake.”
Joseph Stafford blinked too much and he didn’t make eye contact. His hands were folded on the table in front of him, and he kept his gaze locked on them as he shifted restlessly.
He still didn’t look up when Morgan laid out pictures in front of him, although he flinched at the noise as the FBI agent’s hand slapped the table more forcefully than necessary.
“The only mistake here,” Emily told him, “Was you stabbing these women and thinking you could get away with it.”
“I don’t know who those women are,” Stafford muttered, twisting the wedding band on his ring finger. “I don’t know - ” he gulped as Morgan shoved one of the pictures closer, directly under his face. Amy Taylor stared up at him with wide, frightened eyes, her blonde hair fanned out around her face and dyed red by her own blood.
Stafford turned his head away, continuing to claim innocence through ignorance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come on, Joe, don’t tell me you don’t remember,” Morgan said mockingly. “Even if I were as dumb as you, I know I’d be able to recognize the girl I killed.”
Stafford flushed red as he insisted, “I’ve never seen that woman before in my life.”
“You’ll have to do better than that, Joe.” Emily’s advice was tinged with scorn, but she kept a close watch on the suspect; how his jaw clenched tighter when they referred to him by the diminutive “Joe,” how the motion of his eyes from the door to the edge of the table and back became more rapid with every word he said. He’d been on edge this entire interrogation; it shouldn’t take much to get him to break and confess. He wanted the credit too badly, and he was wound up too tight to think better of it - but none of that mattered if he didn’t tell them what they really wanted to know.
“Okay, maybe you could answer an easier question,” Morgan pushed another picture toward Stafford. “Remember this one? Just last night, Joe. Tell me you remember pretty little Karen.”
“I didn’t kill. Anyone.” The red on his cheeks had spread down his neck, and it occurred to Emily distantly that this was how cartoon characters looked just before steam came out of their ears.
“So what, this happened on accident?” she asked nastily. “You just stumbled into her house, grabbed a knife, and she fell on it?”
“I didn’t kill her! Someone else must have.”
“We know it was you, Joe,” Morgan snapped. “We have footage of you, talking to Karen Carter at the bank the day before she was killed. You talked to her and then you followed her home, isn’t that right? And you waited outside until it was dark and then you broke in through the bedroom window.”
“What happened next?” Emily asked. “Did she scream? Did she try to call for help? Or did she try to run away? Because that’s what they all do, Joe, isn’t it, they run away and leave you stuck in your pathetic little life - first your wife, then your daughter - ”
“Shut up!”
“But you’re too much of a coward to punish them for leaving. You have to go after these other women.” Emily started shoving all the pictures closer to him, image after image of death sliding across the table and damning him with vengeful silence. “Innocent women, who had lives and families of their own, and you couldn’t stand to see them with something you couldn’t have. You had to take it away from them. But you made a mistake, didn’t you? You didn’t know Karen had a daughter!”
The last picture Emily set before the murderer was the only one in which the subject was still alive. A ten-year-old girl dressed up in a brand-new Easter dress, her hair in two uneven braids and a light dusting of freckles on her nose. “Doesn’t she look familiar, Joe? Doesn’t she look so much like your daughter, back when she was sweet and innocent and would never dream of leaving you?”
By this point Stafford was trembling with suppressed rage. “Samantha has nothing to do with this.”
“Oh, I think she does, Joe,” Emily contradicted him. “I think you panicked when you saw Karen’s daughter Lindsay. Isn’t that why you stabbed Karen so many times, more than the other women combined?”
“No, that’s not true - ”
“Then what was it? What made her so different from the others? Why did you screw up so badly this time?” Emily leaned forward and laughed. “Why get so stupid that you let her husband witness you leaving the crime scene?”
Stafford leapt to his feet. “Don’t laugh at me!”
“Sit your ass down,” Morgan snarled, pushing Stafford back into his chair.
“You wouldn’t dare laugh at me if you didn’t have a man to protect you,” he hissed at Emily, hardly taking any notice of Morgan looming over him.
Emily rolled her eyes. “That’s right, you like your women alone and defenseless.”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re defenseless or not. I’m still the stronger one.”
“You think killing a bunch of unarmed women proves how strong you are?”
“She didn’t think I could do it,” Stafford pointed at a photo of Karen, bled out on her own kitchen floor. “But I showed her. I proved her wrong.”
“And what about Lindsay?” Emily asked. “Where did you take her?”
Stafford only shook his head. “She doesn’t matter.”
“She matters because I say she matters. Tell us where Lindsay is.”
“And you call me stupid,” Stafford muttered. “The girl doesn’t matter…anymore.”
Morgan put it together a fraction of a second before Emily. “You son of a bitch.”
Emily’s voice was ice, “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing you can fix.”
“What - did - you - do - to - her?”
For the first time since the interrogation began, Stafford looked Emily right in the eye. “I took her out to the shed behind my house and slit her throat.”
She wanted him to be lying, and she knew that he wasn’t. “Get him out here.” She hoped she didn’t sound as tired and defeated as she felt.
Morgan was a little rough in handling Stafford and dragging him out of the interrogation room, but Emily, following a few steps behind, wasn’t going to object. She was too preoccupied by the sight of Karen Carter’s husband in the main room of the police station, clutching what she knew to be a copy of the picture of Lindsay she’d shown Stafford a minute before.
“It doesn’t have to be you.” Emily glanced over to see Hotch, the concern plain in his eyes. “I’ll talk to him,” he offered, as though he hadn’t been working just as hard on this case as she, as though dead children weren’t his nightmare.
Emily shook her head. “I’ve got it,” she assured him, putting as much confidence into her words as she could and taking strength from them. It got her through the door, and kept her walking forward as Mr. Carter scrambled to his feet, gaze focused intensely on her.
“My daughter - is she - did he say - ”
“Mr. Carter, I’m so sorry.”
She could see denial and grief battling on his face, and grief quickly won. He collapsed back into the chair, sobbing, and there was little Emily could do to help but rest a comforting hand on his back. He didn’t seem to notice.
5. Without
Emily hadn’t expected to see so many people there. When she thought about it, it wasn’t so surprising; she just hadn’t expected it, hadn’t thought about it. She decided, as an afterthought, that it was quite a good thing that enough people cared to come to the funeral.
JJ and Will had not brought Henry; he was still too young to understand the seriousness of the moment, and he would have fidgeted and fussed. Still, Emily almost wished that they had; children had always made her think of hope and second chances and new life, and if she ever needed those things, she needed them now. But those weren’t available.
She’d have to deal with this eventually, but not now. Not when she could scan the crowd and practically feel the grief and the pain of those present. Not when Reid, standing next to her, was doing such a very poor job of blocking his own emotions. Not when she could still help somehow, reaching out and curling her fingers around his. Not when he leaned on her as though she were the only thing keeping him on his feet.
She ignored the thought that she didn’t deserve his trust, just as she’d ignored the pain, and the anger, and the desire to be anywhere but here. None of those things would help.
But she still couldn’t make herself look at the coffin.
Her eyes wandered, instead. It was strange to see Garcia decked out in black, with no hint of color. It was even stranger to see her crying, but in a way, it helped. She didn’t look like herself; Emily didn’t have to associate her with the woman who made it her mission to make everyone smile at least once a day, who had the strangest ways of answering her phone, who always told the team to take care of themselves when they went out on a case. She didn’t seem aware of Kevin, standing at her side and not sure how to help, or if he even could; Emily was still glad she had him. No one should be alone at a moment like this.
Morgan was alone, though, standing a little ways apart, and Emily figured that he didn’t trust himself enough to be with the others yet. He hadn’t spoken to Emily in a week, beyond what was necessary. She knew he blamed her, but right now he was willing to pretend he didn’t, and she was more than glad to let him. It was another thing to worry about another time.
She didn’t look at Morgan long - she was afraid that if he met her gaze she would shatter - but when she looked away she found that she was being watched. Rossi didn’t seem to mind that she’d noticed him watching her; he didn’t look away, at least, and there was something in his expression that made her curious. He looked like he was figuring something out. She didn’t know what, but she thought it might be her.
Don’t worry about me, she tried to tell him without speaking. I’ll be fine. I have to be.
They started lowering the coffin, and Jack, who was old enough now to understand what was happening, started sobbing noisily. Reid inhaled sharply at the sound and turned his face away.
“I can’t - Emily, I can’t,” he whispered, choking on the words.
There wasn’t anything to say to that. She just held his hand tighter and waited for it to be over.
6. Apart
Working late meant having to ignore the pointed stares of the other FBI agents in the bullpen, but going home meant silence and chill and an emptiness that threatened to overpower her. Here, at least, there were things to keep her hands and mind busy; even dodging her coworkers was preferable, because it was something to do.
Emily had started to hate the silence. In the silence, she could hear the gunshots and the ambulance sirens and Jack’s sobbing. Work provided other reminders of what had happened, but facing them head on was freeing, and she found herself haunting the bullpen late every night.
That was where Rossi found her, two weeks after the funeral. “If you don’t slow down on that paperwork, you’re going to set some kind of record.”
“You know me,” Emily sighed. “I’m just an overachiever.”
“You don’t have anything better to be doing on a Friday night?”
“Come on, you’ve heard enough of my dating horror stories not to need to ask that.”
“Are you going to stay?”
Emily pretended to misinterpret his question. “I thought I’d finish up in an hour or so.”
Rossi wasn’t fooled by her casual tone. “That isn’t what I meant.”
She nodded, slowly looking up from the file she had been working on. “I’ve thought about it.”
“And?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I’ll let you know when I have.”
Emily turned back to her work, attempting to ignore Rossi as he stayed exactly where he was, leaning against Morgan’s desk and watching her. Surely he would get tired of waiting sooner or later, she just had to be more patient. Yet the minutes ticked by and he was still standing there, and she found that it was much harder than she’d thought to ignore him.
“Why are you still here?” she asked after nearly fifteen minutes of silence.
Rossi shrugged. “You need to talk, I’ve got ears, seems like a good match.”
“I appreciate the offer, but really, I’m fine.”
“So you’re saying you don’t want to talk about it?”
Why couldn’t he just take a hint? Some anger crept into Emily voice as she demanded, “Talk about what, how I got Hotch killed?”
“Aaron knew the job better than anyone,” Rossi reminded her. “He wouldn’t have blamed you. No one does.”
“Because it was him or the hostages, right?”
“You couldn’t have saved them all.”
She wasn’t sure which was worse, when someone told her that, or when they blamed her for not saving him anyway. “I know that. I knew that, and I made my decision. Three lives versus one. It’s a no brainer.”
“If it were really that simple, you wouldn’t be pulling so many extra hours.”
There wasn’t much she could say to that.
“If you need to take some time, figure things out - ”
“That won’t be necessary,” she assured him. “I can figure things out just fine here.” At work, when there was more to do, she could think more clearly. She didn’t know what was going to happen yet, but she wasn’t going to figure it out sitting at home.
Rossi seemed convinced, but he still had more to say. “It would be a shame if this team lost two good agents.”
They both knew that there might not be any other choice. “If I leave, it won’t be because of Hotch. It will be because of me, because I can’t still do this, or because I don’t think this is still a good place for me to be.”
“I guess that’s all I can ask for.”
“Good night, Rossi.”
“Good night, Emily. Take care of yourself.”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I will.”
Rating: PG13/FRT
Characters/Pairings: Prentiss-centric, gen
Warnings: spoilers for “Minimal Loss;” case violence, character death
Summary: “How come none of this gets to you?”
Author’s Note: Thanks to my lovey beta lady_of_scarlet ^_^
1. There
Greece was lovely; everyone told her so. They told her that she would love living there, that it would be like a dream. They asked wasn’t she so excited, wasn’t she so thrilled, wasn’t she so lucky.
Emily knew that there were times when adults ask you questions because they want you to tell them something, and there were times when they asked because they want to tell you something, and she knew this was the second kind of question. She smiled and nodded and said that Greece sounded so wonderful she could hardly wait. It was a familiar routine by now; although admittedly when people had told her how wonderful Russia was, there had been significantly less talk of beaches.
The only one who protested Ambassador Prentiss’ reassignment was Gregor’s little girl Anya, who sniffed and asked who was going to play with her now? None of the embassy children closer to Emily’s own age seemed particularly surprised or hurt to hear that she was moving, and Emily expected no less. They knew by now that diplomats and ambassadors came and went, and so did their children, and it did little good to get attached. Anya was only a little younger than Emily had been when she first realized this, and she too would figure it out soon.
Emily’s technique still required some perfection, though. Just a few short years later she found herself silently wishing her family could stay in Greece. It was, after all, lovely. But they all told her that she would love Saudi Arabia. It really was such an amazing place, and wasn’t she going to learn a lot? Emily would rather stay in Greece and explore the ruins and learn how to take out a fishing boat; but they were telling her, not asking her, so she smiled and practiced her Arabic and said that it sounded like an interesting change.
2. Away
It was a clear bright day, a little too hot to do anything but sit in the shade with a book and a glass of lemonade, but there was too much work to be done around the cottage to enjoy that sort of luxury. Instead, Emily was on her hands and knees in the vegetable garden, ignoring the soreness in her back and the sun beating down on her neck. Weeding was not her favorite chore.
She and her grandfather had been working in silence for several minutes, but when Emily paused to wipe sweat from her forehead and tie her hair back, she could tell he had something on his mind.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Everything is fine with me,” he answered. “But I wonder about you. I love having you around, don’t get me wrong, but it’s been a long time since you visited, and this was all rather short-notice.”
Emily had expected the question, but she had been enjoying the last week and the freedom not to think about it. “Sorry about that.”
Her apology was waved off. “Your father said you were having some kind of boy trouble.”
She sighed. “Something like that.” It hurt to hear her problems trivialized that way, painted in such rosy colors, but she had no one to blame but herself. She had chosen the innocent phrase because it was easier than explaining to her parents why she had really wanted to spend some time abroad.
The ambassador had warned her against running away from her problems, telling her she wasn’t a child any longer and she couldn’t hide from the world. Her father, thankfully, had just said that a bit of a vacation never hurt anyone.
Emily wasn’t sure that she would call her stay in France a vacation, exactly, because as much as she loved the woods and the solitude and her grandfather, it was painful to watch the old man fading away. Even now, pulling weeds next to her, his motions were slow and jerky, his breathing uneven.
She wished he would let her finish the weeding by herself, but she couldn’t ask him to go inside and sit around doing nothing, not when he’d rather be working in the garden - or helping her with her own problems.
“You know, if some boy broke your heart, he’s a fool,” her grandfather told her. “And he’s not worth worrying about.”
Emily’s smile was bittersweet. She wished it were something so innocent as a broken heart that had prompted her time out of the States. “I know,” she told him. “I just need a little time to forget about him.”
He patted her shoulder sympathetically. “Take all the time you need.” He smiled and added teasingly, “After we’ve finished with the garden.”
3. After
Emily hadn’t seen the gun, not really. She had seen a revolver with one round in it - and if she had seen it, Reid most certainly had, too. She knew that, just as surely as she knew how weak and ashamed he felt right now, avoiding her gaze and trying to act as though she weren’t sitting just across from him, watching him closely.
Despite the fact that she’d been anticipating this exchange for hours, racking her brains to find the best words, she still had no idea of what she was going to say. She was still finding her footing after everything - the beating, Jessica’s death, the heart stopping fear that Morgan and Reid hadn’t gotten out in time - and as she tried to choose her words carefully, she was aware of just how thin she was spread.
They needed to have this conversation, though, and she thought it best to try now, before this could gnaw on Reid’s mind any longer.
“I need you to listen to me.” She’d never meant anything more in her life, because Reid had to listen, closely enough to hear the words that she couldn’t find. She didn’t know how to make him accept that it wasn’t his fault. The team had told him - maybe he’d even tried telling himself that - but the message hadn’t gotten through. And why should it? It would not have occurred to him - would never occur to him - that she had been the selfish one.
Emily had already seen him die once, when he had been…a colleague, a sweet guy, sure, but still a stranger in so many ways. How much worse would it have been now, when he was like a brother to her? Seeing him stretched out on the floor, not moving, not breathing, would have hurt far worse than anything Cyrus could have done to her. And in her desire, her need, to spare herself that pain, she had knowingly placed the burden of guilt on Reid’s already strained shoulders.
It hurt now, looking in Reid’s eyes and seeing his disbelief; she swallowed her disappointment and distress, forcing a smile, because it seemed that she couldn’t make him let this go, couldn’t take back the load she had forced onto him. Maybe she should have given him more time. Maybe there simply wasn’t anything she could to do make it better, and she’d let her pride or her hatred for feeling powerless fool her into thinking otherwise.
But he spared her one more glance, cutting her thoughts short and running his thumb gently over her hand. It wasn’t much - a small, tentative gesture - but from a man who avoided so much physical contact, it meant more than anything he could have said. He even smiled at her, warmly enough to elicit another smile from her, a genuine one this time. She knew that things weren’t fixed yet, but for now she just let herself bask in this single, simple moment.
4. Outside
“There’s been some kind of mistake.”
Joseph Stafford blinked too much and he didn’t make eye contact. His hands were folded on the table in front of him, and he kept his gaze locked on them as he shifted restlessly.
He still didn’t look up when Morgan laid out pictures in front of him, although he flinched at the noise as the FBI agent’s hand slapped the table more forcefully than necessary.
“The only mistake here,” Emily told him, “Was you stabbing these women and thinking you could get away with it.”
“I don’t know who those women are,” Stafford muttered, twisting the wedding band on his ring finger. “I don’t know - ” he gulped as Morgan shoved one of the pictures closer, directly under his face. Amy Taylor stared up at him with wide, frightened eyes, her blonde hair fanned out around her face and dyed red by her own blood.
Stafford turned his head away, continuing to claim innocence through ignorance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come on, Joe, don’t tell me you don’t remember,” Morgan said mockingly. “Even if I were as dumb as you, I know I’d be able to recognize the girl I killed.”
Stafford flushed red as he insisted, “I’ve never seen that woman before in my life.”
“You’ll have to do better than that, Joe.” Emily’s advice was tinged with scorn, but she kept a close watch on the suspect; how his jaw clenched tighter when they referred to him by the diminutive “Joe,” how the motion of his eyes from the door to the edge of the table and back became more rapid with every word he said. He’d been on edge this entire interrogation; it shouldn’t take much to get him to break and confess. He wanted the credit too badly, and he was wound up too tight to think better of it - but none of that mattered if he didn’t tell them what they really wanted to know.
“Okay, maybe you could answer an easier question,” Morgan pushed another picture toward Stafford. “Remember this one? Just last night, Joe. Tell me you remember pretty little Karen.”
“I didn’t kill. Anyone.” The red on his cheeks had spread down his neck, and it occurred to Emily distantly that this was how cartoon characters looked just before steam came out of their ears.
“So what, this happened on accident?” she asked nastily. “You just stumbled into her house, grabbed a knife, and she fell on it?”
“I didn’t kill her! Someone else must have.”
“We know it was you, Joe,” Morgan snapped. “We have footage of you, talking to Karen Carter at the bank the day before she was killed. You talked to her and then you followed her home, isn’t that right? And you waited outside until it was dark and then you broke in through the bedroom window.”
“What happened next?” Emily asked. “Did she scream? Did she try to call for help? Or did she try to run away? Because that’s what they all do, Joe, isn’t it, they run away and leave you stuck in your pathetic little life - first your wife, then your daughter - ”
“Shut up!”
“But you’re too much of a coward to punish them for leaving. You have to go after these other women.” Emily started shoving all the pictures closer to him, image after image of death sliding across the table and damning him with vengeful silence. “Innocent women, who had lives and families of their own, and you couldn’t stand to see them with something you couldn’t have. You had to take it away from them. But you made a mistake, didn’t you? You didn’t know Karen had a daughter!”
The last picture Emily set before the murderer was the only one in which the subject was still alive. A ten-year-old girl dressed up in a brand-new Easter dress, her hair in two uneven braids and a light dusting of freckles on her nose. “Doesn’t she look familiar, Joe? Doesn’t she look so much like your daughter, back when she was sweet and innocent and would never dream of leaving you?”
By this point Stafford was trembling with suppressed rage. “Samantha has nothing to do with this.”
“Oh, I think she does, Joe,” Emily contradicted him. “I think you panicked when you saw Karen’s daughter Lindsay. Isn’t that why you stabbed Karen so many times, more than the other women combined?”
“No, that’s not true - ”
“Then what was it? What made her so different from the others? Why did you screw up so badly this time?” Emily leaned forward and laughed. “Why get so stupid that you let her husband witness you leaving the crime scene?”
Stafford leapt to his feet. “Don’t laugh at me!”
“Sit your ass down,” Morgan snarled, pushing Stafford back into his chair.
“You wouldn’t dare laugh at me if you didn’t have a man to protect you,” he hissed at Emily, hardly taking any notice of Morgan looming over him.
Emily rolled her eyes. “That’s right, you like your women alone and defenseless.”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re defenseless or not. I’m still the stronger one.”
“You think killing a bunch of unarmed women proves how strong you are?”
“She didn’t think I could do it,” Stafford pointed at a photo of Karen, bled out on her own kitchen floor. “But I showed her. I proved her wrong.”
“And what about Lindsay?” Emily asked. “Where did you take her?”
Stafford only shook his head. “She doesn’t matter.”
“She matters because I say she matters. Tell us where Lindsay is.”
“And you call me stupid,” Stafford muttered. “The girl doesn’t matter…anymore.”
Morgan put it together a fraction of a second before Emily. “You son of a bitch.”
Emily’s voice was ice, “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing you can fix.”
“What - did - you - do - to - her?”
For the first time since the interrogation began, Stafford looked Emily right in the eye. “I took her out to the shed behind my house and slit her throat.”
She wanted him to be lying, and she knew that he wasn’t. “Get him out here.” She hoped she didn’t sound as tired and defeated as she felt.
Morgan was a little rough in handling Stafford and dragging him out of the interrogation room, but Emily, following a few steps behind, wasn’t going to object. She was too preoccupied by the sight of Karen Carter’s husband in the main room of the police station, clutching what she knew to be a copy of the picture of Lindsay she’d shown Stafford a minute before.
“It doesn’t have to be you.” Emily glanced over to see Hotch, the concern plain in his eyes. “I’ll talk to him,” he offered, as though he hadn’t been working just as hard on this case as she, as though dead children weren’t his nightmare.
Emily shook her head. “I’ve got it,” she assured him, putting as much confidence into her words as she could and taking strength from them. It got her through the door, and kept her walking forward as Mr. Carter scrambled to his feet, gaze focused intensely on her.
“My daughter - is she - did he say - ”
“Mr. Carter, I’m so sorry.”
She could see denial and grief battling on his face, and grief quickly won. He collapsed back into the chair, sobbing, and there was little Emily could do to help but rest a comforting hand on his back. He didn’t seem to notice.
5. Without
Emily hadn’t expected to see so many people there. When she thought about it, it wasn’t so surprising; she just hadn’t expected it, hadn’t thought about it. She decided, as an afterthought, that it was quite a good thing that enough people cared to come to the funeral.
JJ and Will had not brought Henry; he was still too young to understand the seriousness of the moment, and he would have fidgeted and fussed. Still, Emily almost wished that they had; children had always made her think of hope and second chances and new life, and if she ever needed those things, she needed them now. But those weren’t available.
She’d have to deal with this eventually, but not now. Not when she could scan the crowd and practically feel the grief and the pain of those present. Not when Reid, standing next to her, was doing such a very poor job of blocking his own emotions. Not when she could still help somehow, reaching out and curling her fingers around his. Not when he leaned on her as though she were the only thing keeping him on his feet.
She ignored the thought that she didn’t deserve his trust, just as she’d ignored the pain, and the anger, and the desire to be anywhere but here. None of those things would help.
But she still couldn’t make herself look at the coffin.
Her eyes wandered, instead. It was strange to see Garcia decked out in black, with no hint of color. It was even stranger to see her crying, but in a way, it helped. She didn’t look like herself; Emily didn’t have to associate her with the woman who made it her mission to make everyone smile at least once a day, who had the strangest ways of answering her phone, who always told the team to take care of themselves when they went out on a case. She didn’t seem aware of Kevin, standing at her side and not sure how to help, or if he even could; Emily was still glad she had him. No one should be alone at a moment like this.
Morgan was alone, though, standing a little ways apart, and Emily figured that he didn’t trust himself enough to be with the others yet. He hadn’t spoken to Emily in a week, beyond what was necessary. She knew he blamed her, but right now he was willing to pretend he didn’t, and she was more than glad to let him. It was another thing to worry about another time.
She didn’t look at Morgan long - she was afraid that if he met her gaze she would shatter - but when she looked away she found that she was being watched. Rossi didn’t seem to mind that she’d noticed him watching her; he didn’t look away, at least, and there was something in his expression that made her curious. He looked like he was figuring something out. She didn’t know what, but she thought it might be her.
Don’t worry about me, she tried to tell him without speaking. I’ll be fine. I have to be.
They started lowering the coffin, and Jack, who was old enough now to understand what was happening, started sobbing noisily. Reid inhaled sharply at the sound and turned his face away.
“I can’t - Emily, I can’t,” he whispered, choking on the words.
There wasn’t anything to say to that. She just held his hand tighter and waited for it to be over.
6. Apart
Working late meant having to ignore the pointed stares of the other FBI agents in the bullpen, but going home meant silence and chill and an emptiness that threatened to overpower her. Here, at least, there were things to keep her hands and mind busy; even dodging her coworkers was preferable, because it was something to do.
Emily had started to hate the silence. In the silence, she could hear the gunshots and the ambulance sirens and Jack’s sobbing. Work provided other reminders of what had happened, but facing them head on was freeing, and she found herself haunting the bullpen late every night.
That was where Rossi found her, two weeks after the funeral. “If you don’t slow down on that paperwork, you’re going to set some kind of record.”
“You know me,” Emily sighed. “I’m just an overachiever.”
“You don’t have anything better to be doing on a Friday night?”
“Come on, you’ve heard enough of my dating horror stories not to need to ask that.”
“Are you going to stay?”
Emily pretended to misinterpret his question. “I thought I’d finish up in an hour or so.”
Rossi wasn’t fooled by her casual tone. “That isn’t what I meant.”
She nodded, slowly looking up from the file she had been working on. “I’ve thought about it.”
“And?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I’ll let you know when I have.”
Emily turned back to her work, attempting to ignore Rossi as he stayed exactly where he was, leaning against Morgan’s desk and watching her. Surely he would get tired of waiting sooner or later, she just had to be more patient. Yet the minutes ticked by and he was still standing there, and she found that it was much harder than she’d thought to ignore him.
“Why are you still here?” she asked after nearly fifteen minutes of silence.
Rossi shrugged. “You need to talk, I’ve got ears, seems like a good match.”
“I appreciate the offer, but really, I’m fine.”
“So you’re saying you don’t want to talk about it?”
Why couldn’t he just take a hint? Some anger crept into Emily voice as she demanded, “Talk about what, how I got Hotch killed?”
“Aaron knew the job better than anyone,” Rossi reminded her. “He wouldn’t have blamed you. No one does.”
“Because it was him or the hostages, right?”
“You couldn’t have saved them all.”
She wasn’t sure which was worse, when someone told her that, or when they blamed her for not saving him anyway. “I know that. I knew that, and I made my decision. Three lives versus one. It’s a no brainer.”
“If it were really that simple, you wouldn’t be pulling so many extra hours.”
There wasn’t much she could say to that.
“If you need to take some time, figure things out - ”
“That won’t be necessary,” she assured him. “I can figure things out just fine here.” At work, when there was more to do, she could think more clearly. She didn’t know what was going to happen yet, but she wasn’t going to figure it out sitting at home.
Rossi seemed convinced, but he still had more to say. “It would be a shame if this team lost two good agents.”
They both knew that there might not be any other choice. “If I leave, it won’t be because of Hotch. It will be because of me, because I can’t still do this, or because I don’t think this is still a good place for me to be.”
“I guess that’s all I can ask for.”
“Good night, Rossi.”
“Good night, Emily. Take care of yourself.”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I will.”