Scab
A.N. Post-ep to 10X11, The Forever People
Reid was just closing the book, literally, on a long sojourn with Augustine on the problem of evil, when his phone sounded a text. JJ.
ARE YOU ALONE?
When am I ever not alone? YES.
He waited for her to respond, thinking she meant to call him. Maybe she wants to talk about it. Really talk about it. Finally.
He'd been waiting since it happened. Since before 'it' happened, if he was honest with himself. Because 'it' had only happened a year ago, the significance of the anniversary not lost on him. But things had already been different, before that. She had already been different.
The reality was that the JJ who had returned to the BAU from State hadn't been the same woman who'd left it. At first, he'd thought it was him. He'd thought he'd inserted distance into their relationship when the deception about Emily had been revealed. He'd been so angry, and so hurt.
But, from the distance of a few years, it seemed more obvious that the change had actually happened during that time right after she'd left the BAU. She was already so different, by the time Emily died. Didn't die. When I mourned a death that never actually happened.
She had been different, though he couldn't say how. He'd chalked it up to her being unhappy with her job with State. She hadn't wanted to leave the team, after all. Or maybe, he'd thought, it was him. Maybe it felt different just because they weren't seeing each other every day. All Reid knew for certain was that, whenever or however it started, the change had become more acute since her abduction, and the anniversary seemed to be accentuating it.
He was still holding his phone, expecting it to ring, when it did. Or didn't. The ringing wasn't from his phone, he realized. It was coming from his doorbell.
Reid went to the door and looked through the keyhole. He almost didn't recognize her. Her hair was uncombed, her eyes rimmed in red. But it was JJ. He opened it at once.
"JJ, I thought…."
She spoke as she pushed past him into his apartment. "Why did you give that to me?"
"What?" Feeling under attack, and not knowing why.
"Why did you give me Tivon Askari's file? What did you think it would do?"
Guilt immediately flooded Spencer Reid. Have I made it worse? Did I do the wrong thing? Did I misunderstand?
"Was I supposed to feel sorry for him? Was I supposed to stop being angry?"
"JJ, I…."
"Why, Spence? Why did you make me read that?" Anger fading into plaintiveness. Tears already tracking down her cheeks.
He knew she was only lashing out. Trying to find some outlet for the emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. He knew not to take it personally. And yet….
Reid took her by the elbow and brought her over to his sofa. That she allowed herself to be maneuvered so easily belied the fact that the real focus of her anguish wasn't him. Thank God.
"How did you get here?" Worried that she'd driven in this state, and determined not to let her do so again.
"What does it matter how I got here? Spence, why?" Back to her original question.
He sat beside her, facing her, and took a breath to calm his own rising emotion.
"I'm sorry, JJ. I didn't know what else to do, and I thought it might help. I just…..I wanted to help you. Obviously, I didn't. And I'm sorry."
"But how did you think it would help me, Spence? How?"
Her tone had changed. Reid heard it in her voice. It hadn't really been anger he'd heard, just before. And it wasn't anger now. It was desperation. She really wanted to know. It was as though she thought he held the answer, and knew how to alleviate the pain she was in.
Explaining why he'd done what he'd done wasn't so easy. At the time, his brain had made the leaps without bothering to delineate the steps, and he'd just gone along with it. He'd just known it was what she needed. Now he had to work through it with her, finding the 'how' and the 'why'.
"I just thought that… From what you told me before, it sounded like he'd become more than human to you. He'd become some thing that had power over you. You needed a word for what that felt like, and..."
"And you couldn't find one." They'd been through this already.
He had something to confess. "Actually, I did find one. I just didn't want to tell you what it was."
At the time, demanding 'the word' had just been something to say. Something to push him away with. She'd seen his glances, had known he'd been watching her for a while. Noticing. And, because he was who he was, and because they were who they were to one another, she'd known he would come to her about it, one day. That he would want to unroof the scab she'd so carefully grown over it. And she'd hoped he wouldn't do it until she'd begun to heal beneath the surface.
But, instead of healing, the wound had begun to fester. It had begun to spread, like an infection, to invade the healthy tissue. Her marriage. Her mothering of Henry. Even her past, as she came to reinterpret who she was, that she could be so hideously victimized.
Today, he'd wanted her to let him pull off the scab, to expose the wound. And she hadn't been ready. So she'd pushed him away. She'd even done her best to wound him, with the news of her miscarriage. He'd been shocked, and saddened, and helpless. Wounded for her, in his empathy. But she knew that the deeper wound was her refusal to let him help her.
Now she was thrown. She'd challenged him to find that word that would describe what had happened to her, to her life. What felt like it was happening still. The process that felt like it was completely beyond her control.
Her voice was soft this time. Meek. Heartbreaking, to Reid.
"What is it? What is the word?" She grabbed one of his sofa pillows and hugged it in front of her, a surrogate shield.
He looked at her for a long time before answering. Taking measure. Seeking guidance. This wasn't the JJ he'd known and loved for so long. But wasn't that just the point? So he told her.
"The word is 'annihilation'."
She stared at him, absorbing it, weighing it…..identifying with it. "You think…"
He hurried to correct her. "No, no! No, I don't think he's done that to you. I don't think he can. He doesn't have that kind of power, JJ. He's never had it."
She hugged the pillow tighter, her eyes studying the grain of the wood on his floor. Then she raised them to his.
"You're talking about him in the present tense. Like he's still alive." Remembering how real he'd seemed, just an hour ago.
As though he'd been there, as though he'd listened to their 'conversation', Reid responded with a question. "Is that how it seems to you?"
JJ fell back against the sofa cushions, quiet. Deflated. Reid leaned back as well, giving her all the space she might need. He let his voice close the distance between them.
"JJ, I'll never feel the kind of loss you did when you lost your baby. But I do know what it's like to have a loss that affects the whole rest of your life. Everything is different. Every day you end up wondering how that day would have been different if they'd lived. How your life would have been different. And I know what it's like to be the one who survived."
Her tears were flowing once again. Beneath them, her eyes told him she was mourning both of their losses, and he loved her for it. But he had something to say that needed to be said, so he went on.
"And I know what it's like to feel helpless. Like you have no control. Like you'll never have control again."
'Control' was pretty much JJ's middle name. To have lost it, even momentarily, had been its own trauma. But this newer feeling, the feeling that her control was slipping away again….had slipped away… was intolerable.
"How do I get it back?"
He kept his eyes on hers, holding them steadily. "You humanize him."
Her eyes narrowed with her unspoken question.
"You turn him back into what he is. Was. What he was all along. Just a human being. With no more power over you than any other human being."
"And you thought, if I read about his pathetic childhood, I would see him that way?" Unable to keep a little bit of challenge from creeping into her voice again.
He shrugged. "I'm sorry. I was wrong. I just thought…. I thought that maybe, if you saw what had happened to him, how he'd become who he was…. He did evil things, but he wasn't evil incarnate, JJ. He was just a human being who chose the wrong path. Or had it chosen for him. Either way, he was pathetic. He had nothing inside of him, nothing at his core, so he allowed it to become filled with evil. You don't need to feel sorry for him. But you don't need to give him power, either."
She was sniffling. "Is that what you think I'm doing?"
He was very direct with his response. "I think you had an experience, when you were abducted, where you lost your sense of control. Where you were completely dependent on the whim and desire of men…and especially one deluded individual, bent on causing you pain."
JJ almost visibly folded in upon herself, remembering. He'd described it exactly. Because he knows.
"It's what happened to you, too. I know. I saw."
Which had made it all the more traumatizing for Reid, actually. That his victimization had been seen by all of them had made it that much more difficult to regain his confidence, to reclaim his place with the team.
He was years past it now, but it still always gave him pause. He nodded in acknowledgement. "Yes, it happened to me, too. I had the impossible task of trying to please two alters while pleading with the third to save me."
"But you saved yourself, Spence. I couldn't. I was completely dependent, until Emily broke into that basement."
"But you fought back, after that. And you won."
She shook her head. "What did I win, Spence? The right to live my life looking over my shoulder? Too frightened to be alone? Unable to sleep, unable….." She filled up again. "Do you want to know what happened when I read through that folder?"
Softly. "Only if you want to tell me."
She did. She told him how she'd held a full conversation with her tormenter. How she'd virtually heard his telling her how he had, and would continue to, change her life. How she'd felt, once again, at his mercy, despite her protests.
"He took it back from me, Spence. Every ounce of control I'd wrestled into my life again….he took it back. He's right. He's already taken my sleep. He's already made me different. What's next? Is he right about the rest? Is it my job? My family? My whole life?" She tried to stifle a sob. "You're right, you know. With the word. He's annihilating me. He's taking everything!"
It engulfed her like a wave, and she dissolved, sobbing into the pillow in front of her.
Reid sat across from her, torn. He'd wanted so badly to reach out, earlier. But her body language had been shouting at him to keep his distance. She'd kept her clenched hands between them, signaling her struggle for control, and her fear that his touch would make her lose it.
But her hands weren't clenched now. So Reid did what he'd so wanted to do before. He slid across the sofa to her, and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. This time, she didn't resist at all. JJ fell forward into him, her head against his chest, and wept.
He tightened his embrace, enveloping her. She'd lost the control she held so precious. But he was determined that she realize she could lose it in the safety of his arms, and still be intact. Not annihilated. Still JJ.
After a while, he sensed she was no longer crying, but simply resting against him, the occasional hiccoughing sigh as a remnant of her tears. He pulled back and turned her, so that he was resting against the sofa, and she against him. Then he wrapped his arms tight around her once again. When she snuggled in closer, he knew he'd done the right thing.
"Sorry," she sniffed.
"Why?"
She looked up at him, wondering if he was teasing. "Because I lost it."
He nodded. "And you're still here."
She didn't follow. "What does that mean?"
"It means, you momentarily gave up your control, and it didn't kill you."
She looked at him again. He'd better be teasing.
"I don't understand why …"
He spoke over her. "JJ, you've been trying to control a process that can't be controlled. You can't heal without acknowledging that you've been wounded. So, all right,maybe you're beginning to do that. You're able to say what happened to you in Afghanistan, and what happened last year. But….did you hear what you really said? You said, "If I had never gotten involved, Nadia and her daughter would still be alive and Henry would have a little…" In typical Reid fashion, he'd repeated it precisely.
"Well, it's true." Another hiccough.
"No, it's not, JJ. That's just the point. You're trying to tell yourself that you had control, even then. That you could have made a different decision and changed the whole outcome. But it wasn't your decision that killed that woman and her daughter. Just like it wasn't your decision to plant an IED to blow up the Humvee you were riding in. You're fighting so hard for control that you're taking responsibility for things that others did to you. You don't even see it."
"See what?"
"That sometimes you don't have it. You can't control every situation you're in, just like you can't always control how you react. And it can still be okay. It was okay to lose control here, tonight, because you did it with someone who loves you. It was safe. It will always be safe with me. I hope you know that."
That she didn't argue the point with him spoke volumes. He pulled her close again, and she leaned heavily into his chest. They sat there in silence for a long while, as he felt the tension of her shoulders and arms gradually unwind. Eventually, she was ready to speak.
"Spence?"
"Hmm?"
"I don't think I can do this with anyone else. I…. I can't talk with the rest of the team about this. I don't know that I'll ever be able to. Can we keep it just between us?"
She felt his sigh, but couldn't see his sad smile.
Still struggling for control. That's my JJ. "We can do whatever you want. Except nothing."
She looked up at him. "Now who's trying to control things?" Garnering a smile.
"How about this? If you promise to think about seeing someone…someone professional, and no one else needs to know about it….if you promise to consider it, I'll promise to keep hounding you about it."
She sat up and gave him a sarcastic look. "What kind of a deal is that?"
He gave her a grin. "One made by a genius."
It felt so much like it used to feel between them. Easy, affectionate. Normal. It touched something deep inside and, just for a moment, JJ recognized a remnant of the self she'd spent a lifetime becoming.
Maybe he's right. Maybe I'm still in here after all. Maybe, the next time the scab rips off, there will be healthy tissue underneath.
Until then, and throughout all of the hard work she knew lay ahead of her, she would remain knit together with the love of her best friend. Because Reid was right. She would always be safe with him.
JJ raised one hand and lifted her pinky finger, beckoning for his.
"Deal."