Time On Your Hands
A standalone one-shot on the strangely sweet nexus of Cheetos and online Scrabble.
You've been dead for a month now. Of all the places you thought you'd end up when you died, you never were cynical enough to imagine you'd spend the afterlife skulking through the back streets and faded alleys of Paris. You never thought that if you came back to this city, you would sleep in a tiny, dingy room on a bed with a broken leg that you always forget about until after you've tripped over it. You never thought you'd spend your days hunting down fresh coffee and a newspaper at local cafes, and then sipping it slowly while you try not to be caught staring down every single passersby, waiting for eternity to pass. And you never once thought that you could still hurt this much after you died, after everything you knew as your life was essentially ripped from you.
It's strange how out of place you feel here, when everything in your life prepared you in some way for this ordeal. You've traveled the globe; you are fluent in multiple languages; you received an excellent education; you are focused and loyal to a fault, and the physical aspects of your job are the parts you relish the most. No one should be more prepared for this strange and painful afterlife than you. But you are now caught in a struggle between forgetting who you were so that you can stay safe, and using all of your skills to survive here. The act of forgetting is tearing you apart, because you are drawn by instinct to the people, places, and things you loved, and you are forbidden any contact with them anymore. You find yourself clinging to the odd phrases that remind you of them, and you wander the city in search of more memories. These last few weeks have been far more draining on your emotions than you ever anticipated. You've already swallowed so many tears, and it's only been a month. Sometimes you feel so empty and used up that you'd swear you could pass right through the walls and people around you.
Paris used to move you. France was the first place you left your heart, before you found it again in DC. You used to love to study this city the way Monet did, to discover how light plays on all the buildings and people, and yet now the same dark, ancient places you loved terrify you because the darkness has lost its serenity, its security.
You were never afraid of the dark until you started working for the BAU, when you had to seek out the evil that lived there. Even the CIA did not horrify you like working for the BAU did. The CIA was about sacrifice and secrets and knowing how to track and catch your enemy. You never needed to understand the people you were pursuing. In the BAU, though, you had to look for evil in everyone you met, and you had to dig into it to learn how it began, why it consumes, why it is never really vanquished. You've had more days and nights than you care to remember where you wondered just how fine the line was between you and the evil you were pursuing. Before the BAU, your nightmares were mostly about the things you did not know or understand. After, they were about the things you were learning. Now, they are about the person you might become without your family around to keep you grounded, to remind you what matters. You know the secrets this Paris darkness keeps, so you know the reasons you have to keep running.
You never thought you'd spend the afterlife so far from the people you cared about. You never thought you could feel this alone surrounded by so many people, and all because the people you want nearest to you are the same people you may never see again. You never thought there would be a distance between you that no one could close. All the years you put into building a family with the people you worked with, opening up to them as you never had before, unburying your secrets and unburdening your soul, you never once believed it could all be taken from you in a matter of moments. You are bothered by how quickly you were able to leave them behind. You are not bothered, however, by what you are asked to do now, only that you are asked to do these things alone. There are a lot of things you have to do to stay safe here. Some of the things you have to take on, and some of the things you have to sacrifice, are worthwhile. Most are necessary to survive. But let it never be said that Emily Prentiss is living. You are not living like this; this is not living.
The only thing that feels real about the place you are in is the chill that is seeping into your skin through your clothes. As you pull the lapels of your coat tighter around you, it becomes apparent that you are the only person on the street tonight suffering from the climate, which is strange, because it isn't all that different from the one you lived in all those years you were in DC. It should be familiar, but nothing is allowed to be familiar anymore. No one can recognize you. No one can greet you. No one can miss you. No one can call you, or ask you for advice, or keep you awake hours into the night telling worn but well-loved stories about your past. The more you remember all the things you were ordered to forget, the more you shiver. You can't remember when you've ever felt this cold; like warmth was something you could only feel again in your dreams, something you could only ever witness again from a distance.
You finally near the door of the hotel you've been staying in until you could safely look for an apartment without also having to look over your shoulder. You are confident that you will find one quickly; it may have been a while since you've spent time in Paris, but one of the great things about these historic cities is that they are resistant to change, so it doesn't take long to remember how the streets and neighborhoods are laid out. You walk past the worn, slightly splintered front desk to the narrow staircase, which leads up three flights to the dim hallway, past the shared bathroom, and finally to your room. You cringe as the hinges squeak when you close the door behind you. For all intents and purposes, you may be dead, but your profiler's instincts linger as you take in the room.
It's possible that this hotel has seen better days, but it never pretended to any luxury. It exists and has always existed to serve people like you. Everyone who stays here is hiding or running from something, and the grit, dust, and grime that coat almost everything you see serve to give the entire building and its occupants a sameness, a similarity in appearance that has anonymity as a byproduct. It erases the edges of vitality, of the emotions and strength of spirit that at one time made every guest distinct to the people in their lives.
Places like this, even in—especially in—the most romantic city in the world, take the picture of yourself that you have been sketching for years, and smudge it until the lines are unrecognizable. No matter what your emotional or physical condition is when you arrive, no one who stays here for more than one night can shed the drained apathy that drapes on your skin slowly, wrapping around you over the course of hours, like a mummy's gauze. People stay here because they don't want to be found. No one who has someone looking for them would want them to find this sadness, this void you will call home. No one has cared about this place for years, and you suspect that is a substantial part of the reason you feel comfortable here; you want the places where you spend your time to feel the way you do. It takes energy to care, and strength to hurt, and you are done with all of it now. Emily cared, and Emily bled, and Emily almost had everything she ever wanted. But Emily is gone now, and so are all the things and people she used to call home. All you have left of her are scars on your body and time on your hands.
There is a small table by the window, a lumpy arm chair that has a few spots that need patching, and a lamp near the bed in addition to the one overhead. The window offers a view of an alley and the building across it. You cross the room carefully, attempting without success to avoid the floorboards that are slightly bowed and soft from overuse. After arranging the pillow so that you can sit comfortably on the bed with your legs stretched out and your ankles crossed, you pull out the envelope that you carried safely away from the table outside the cafe. That your whole life has been reduced to the contents of an envelope is not what depresses you; you are far more troubled by the fact that you have chosen the path that led you to this envelope twice. When you chose to go undercover to get Ian Doyle the first time, you gave up parts of yourself to get that envelope that you still haven't completely recovered, and you worry about what you have left to lose. You've spent all the years since you left Doyle trying to sort it all out, but you don't think you are any closer tonight than you were when you started.
You shake out the contents of the envelope onto the bed, and are met with three passports, each for a different country and each with a new identity in case one gets compromised. There are also some other papers, including the one giving you the details of your new identity, which comes courtesy of the State Department. You try to read them over, but you find your mind wandering too much and set them aside. That's when you see that the envelope, which you unceremoniously dropped on the bed beside you, has a rather coarse dust on it that you hadn't noticed before. You pick it up carefully, as you would during any investigation while you were alive, and lean back so that more light falls on the stiff yellow-orange paper. There are a few smudges that are a brighter orange color, and following a hunch, you hold that part of the envelope up to your nose and smell it. Your instincts were right; the smell is faint but unmistakeable, and as tears begin to pool around your eyes, you thank fate and every god you ever read about for this gift. It's Cheetos dust, and these small granules of orange powder are your last link to your old life, to the family you had to abandon to save.
You learned of Jennifer's obsession with Cheetos the day you started at the BAU. You'd both been sitting at her desk filling out a mountain of paperwork so tall that you swore you saw a tiny goat lazily wandering around the top of the stack. Stupid goat will probably just eat everything I write on anyway, and then I'll have to start all over again. Stupid goat, you muttered, not realizing that she heard you until you heard her chuckle. She kindly pretended not to notice your flushed face and instead rose from her seat and headed for the door. As she reached it, she turned toward you and said that anytime someone started looking for a goat to blame for delayed paperwork, it was clearly time to take a break. She introduced you to the break room and left the room while you prepared a fresh pot of coffee.
You were getting antsy waiting for the coffeemaker to finish, so you wandered out of the room, out of the bullpen, and past the elevators, trying to absorb as much as you could about the layout of the building so you would be able to settle in more easily. As you passed the room that housed the team's lockers, you noticed a small room at the end of the hall that looked like it had a few vending machines in it. Your stomach had begun to grumble at you for your benign neglect, so you walked a little more briskly toward the machines, your hand subconsciously reaching in your pocket for some change.
When you reached the vending area, it became immediately clear that you were not alone. JJ was alternately banging on the machine and swearing profusely at it. A bag of Cheetos was dangling, but would not fall. Before she decides to escalate to kicking the machine, you decided to intervene. You placed a tentative hand on her wrist, not applying enough pressure to actually stop her from hitting the machine again, but enough to show her that you want her to stop before she hurts herself. She looks from her wrist back to you, and lowers her arm. Blushing at the scene she had caused, she told you that the vending machine took her money, but failed to deliver her selection. She'd been craving them all day, she said. You reminded her that it was still morning; that, in fact, you'd only been there for about two hours. She glared at you, so you pulled out a small handful of change, and keyed in your snack choice. Her eyes widened, and she actually clapped a few times as two bags of Cheetos dropped to the bottom of the dispenser. She snatched them from the door, tearing into the bag like a hyena. (You took that moment to remind yourself to spend less time at the zoo, as you were starting to see animals everywhere.) You smirked at her and said, I'll leave you alone. Looks like you two want some privacy.
She laughed, and thanked you as you walked back down the hall to her office. When she returned a few minutes later, she looked like she'd just come from a religious experience, and there was orange dust all over her fingers that eventually would end up all over your paperwork. She joked that so well known was her Cheetos problem that she didn't even need to sign her work anymore. All she had to do was leave an orange fingerprint on it, and her boss would know who it was from.
For the first time since you arrived in Paris, the hours slip by as you try to imagine how the Cheetos dust came to be on the envelope JJ handed you at the cafe. Was it an accident? Was she eating them on the plane, and forgot to wipe her fingers off before descending the jet's staircase? Did she prepare the envelope while snacking on the nearest bag? Or was it on purpose, to remind you of the day you first met, to beg you to remember her, to ask you to believe in her ability to bring you back to life when the time came? The scenarios get more ridiculous as time passes, until you are picturing her lugging two bags around this city, both filled entirely with bags of her favorite snack, with the exception of the envelope that she gave you. You imagine a secret room under her house stocked with nothing but the orange snack and her favorite coffee. You close your eyes and see her leading the BAU team into a hostage crisis at a Cheetos warehouse, and as a reward for its successful conclusion, JJ gets paid in Cheetos. For the first time since you woke up in the hospital, you laugh, and your tears are warm rain on the cracked, abandoned fields of your skin.
Sliding down the bed, you turn onto your side and gently lift the envelope and place it on the table near the bed, careful to preserve the Cheetos fingerprints that feel like a lifeline now. You never realized you would miss her so quickly. You never realized just how much of your life she filled, and how slow you would be to let go of anything that reminded you of her. Walking away from her after your meeting was more difficult than you expected, and you're starting to see why now. You've been strong your whole life; you've always been willing to withstand any amount of pain to accomplish the things in your life that needed to be done, and you've always been willing to set yourself aside for the betterment of others. What you are beginning to realize, though, is that the things and people you were willing to walk away from were also those from whom a little (or a lot of) distance would be welcome. The situation was beyond solving; the people beyond saving. That's not the case this time. These people you left behind weren't broken when you left—you broke them by leaving. And you broke whatever was left in your chest by walking away from JJ twice.
It would kill you, if you weren't already a ghost of yourself without them, to think about how much you are going to miss, how much you already have missed of their lives. You want to help JJ with Henry's first day of school, and watch as Garcia and Morgan stop settling, for Kevin in Garcia's case, for a string of short-lived romances and one-night stands in Morgan's, and finally reach for the brass ring of being together. You want to witness Rossi settling down, and Reid finding love. You want to watch Henry and Jack grow up, and you want to see the whole team become grandparents. You want to be there as all of them find happiness, the real kind, the only kind that is the antidote for the dark and crushing work you do, and you want more than anything to be part of the happiness they find. All you can do, though, is whatever needs to be done to survive each moment. You used to view life in years, in long-term goals and accomplishments and strategies, and now all you can do is try not to let the seconds bear down on you as they pass.
You settle on your stomach, and wrap your arms around the pillow as you struggle to recall when sleeping was a welcome reprieve from the day, and when waking up was a chance at a fresh start. You dread the nights now, and have purposely started leaving the lamps on when you go to bed so you will sleep less. Your nights have now disappeared into endless days, as you live like you've found yourself at the bottom of the world. It's just you and your ice floe drifting down the city streets, trying to find a safe place to land. Your eyes close, and you dream of orange fingerprints and the heart and hands that gave them to you. This night, you finally rest. This night, your dreams cease wandering and find a place to rest. This night, your bed is the only place you want to be.
When you awake, the pale fire of dusk is lighting the room, and you allow your eyes to open gradually so that as little distance as possible lies between you and your sweetest dream. Once you are fully awake, you lift yourself off the bed and search through your go bag for a change of clothes and your shower kit. At this time of day, the hotel is mostly empty, as many of the guests have gone out in search of dinner and a new adventure in the city. You step out of your clothes and luxuriate in the uninterrupted hot water pouring down on you from the slightly rusted shower head in the shared bathroom on your hotel floor. As you run a soapy washcloth across all of your curves, you sigh, for the first time in months allowing yourself to come to life, to feel something beyond numbness, exhaustion, frustration, and fear. The feeling fades as you dry and dress yourself, but you don't chase it like you would have even hours before.
Once you are dressed, and your hair is brushed and mostly dry, you decide to head down to the streets below in search of food, and maybe an internet cafe. It's been a long time since you spent any time online, and your friendship with Garcia made you more dependent on the internet than you were before you started at the BAU. A reasonable enough period of time has passed to allow you to go online safely without fear of being discovered and monitored by Ian Doyle or any of the "employees" of his arms dealing network. Among the usual documents you expected to find in the envelope that JJ provided you, you found an email account for each of the new identities that the State Department had created for you.
You pick up a baguette and a bowl of soup at a nearby restaurant, and walk toward the internet cafe furthest from your hotel but still accessible on foot – you don't want to draw attention to yourself by hiring a taxi, and you don't want to give away your location by choosing a place closer to your hotel, though there are several within a few blocks. You choose a moderate pace for your walk, and allow yourself to take in the sights and scenes about you beyond what is necessary for basic surveillance. You actually enjoy your walk tonight, and are almost disappointed to find yourself at your destination with your hand on the door.
You enter, and carefully read the signage detailing the publishing services offered, and find the prices for surfing the web. You find a seat at the computer furthest from the street entrance, and remove the carefully folded paper from the pocket of your coat containing the log-in information for your email account. You memorize it quickly to avoid setting it out where someone else could read it to avoid raising suspicions about the fact that there were several identities listed on it. You pull up the browser, find the email homepage, and enter the first username and password on the list. Even though this is a new account, you are a little taken aback to find that there already several legitimate emails awaiting you. Most of them are confirmations that the account has been set up, but there is another that captures your eye: it's a request from two weeks ago for your favorite online Scrabble site.
Cheetobreath has invited you to join a game of Scrabble. Do you accept this invitation?
Click YES or NO
A smile spreads over your face, and you click to accept. This is a part of the dream you had been trying to hold onto, not just this afternoon, but since you woke up from your surgery and faced the terrible decision of leaving behind all of the people you cared about. You close your eyes for a moment and picture her sitting at the computer in her home office, or maybe even the office in Quantico. Quickly, you calculate the time difference between you, and try to guess what she might be doing now, down to the tiniest gesture and smile. You almost see the smirk that must have graced her face as she defied government policy by setting up this game.
You register for the Scrabble site under your new identity, and start the game. JJ isn't online yet, so you examine your letter tiles carefully before laying out your opening move: H-O-P-E-F-U-L. You watch the points tally, and with the bonus for using all of your tiles in the first turn, you finally feel, for the first time, like you are starting to win the important parts of this long war you've been fighting. It is not the score but the victory that matters, and what you might win when this game ends, and another can begin in person.
A/N: I strongly encourage you to leave a signed review if possible (especially if it includes shameless begging for a new story. I'm a sucker for that). I answer each one I get. Also, be sure to share this story with your friends and read my other CM fic, Faith, if you enjoyed this one. Thank you for reading.