A/N: I've wanted to explore the aftermath of JJ's miscarriage (and how it played out alongside everything with Emily) for a long time. I think it's a really rich topic, but I've hesitated until now because it's one I had to do justice; writing about the miscarriage without reducing JJ's character to just her motherhood was an important goal for me. I did my best to avoid it, and I really hope I got the balance right. I'd appreciate any feedback! Enjoy!

Morgan was relieved when JJ's armour finally cracked.

Training together had become routine for them in the months since she left the BAU. They were finally back at it after JJ's latest mystery trip away, and Morgan was eager for more days like this now that she'd hinted—in the vague way that JJ always talked about her DOD job—that she was done with the travel for good. They'd all missed having her around.

By now he knew JJ's hand-to-hand style inside out; after all, he'd watched it develop. This wasn't it. Her defensive blocks were getting aggressive. Her offensive hits were turning sloppy and frantic. She was breathing hard, with a hitch behind each inhale that said it wasn't just from exertion. And Morgan recognized the look in her eyes—a tearful kind of desperation that seemed to shrink her down in defeat and puff her up in anger all at once.

To be honest, JJ looked a lot like he'd felt so many times since Emily's funeral. There was a rawness to her grief that he hadn't seen yet from behind her mask of practiced calm, and yeah, seeing it now was a relief.

Morgan wanted to be her punching bag and have that give her what she needed, but all the nights he'd spent abusing his gym equipment had only left him frustrated that the effort couldn't take away the sting of losing Emily. Grieving was one thing, but letting grief spiral was another, and JJ… right now, she was spiralling.

So when her next punch came, he dodged to the side and wrapped a hand around her wrist. "JJ, hey, let's hit pause for a minute."

She bristled and pulled back, but kept her stance up, ready. "No, I'm good. I can keep going."

Morgan flashed a cheerful smile to defuse the challenge in her eyes. "Oh I know you're good, Rocky," he assured her. "I need a break. Just for a bit."

JJ shot him a skeptical glare. "You?" Her free-floating anger was winning out against the tears he'd seen building a moment ago—they'd all but vanished. Hell, that was probably the point.

"Yeah, me," he drawled, mustering his best caricature of the Derek Morgan charm to give her something besides anger to focus on. He met her glower with a cocky grin, sliding his shirt up over his abs. "I've gotta be careful—I overdo it at the gym and all of this gets a little too ripped." Her incredulous stare spurred him on. "It's a real problem. The ladies can't handle it."

"Right," JJ scoffed, but a reluctant smirk crept across her face as she did. Her shoulders relaxed. Morgan gave himself a figurative pat on the back and sent JJ an exaggerated wink for good measure.

"Now you get it. I live a delicate balance, blondie."

JJ rolled her eyes fondly and followed Morgan's lead as he shed his gear, but she turned away when he settled himself on a bleacher nearby. She wished she could just sit down and join him, but her heart was still pounding; her chest was still aching… She was too restless to settle. The lull in their conversation, which should have been nothing, was making her more uncomfortable with every beat that passed.

The problem was that everything around her felt off lately. Distorted, like she was experiencing her world from behind a wall of warped glass. When she was stuck in Afghanistan recovering from her injuries, all JJ had wanted was to come home—to finally hug her son and see her family. It was all she could imagine that might stop the gnawing ache she'd felt ever since she came to and found out how much she'd lost.

But she was home now, and that ache sure hadn't gone away.

She knew Morgan's gaze was following her as she paced. It was intent enough to cut through the fog her mind was lost in, and the scrutiny made her want to squirm. She spun around to meet his worried eyes.

"Grab me that water?" he asked, covering for being caught in a stare. JJ obliged, but ignored him when he gestured to a seat nearby, silently inviting her to join him. The familiar lump in her throat was growing too heavy for a conversation, and she couldn't blink away the burning sting in her eyes. Instead of sitting, she sent Morgan a dismissive smile and turned away again. Or at least that was the goal. The way the smile pulled at her cheeks felt a lot more like a grimace.

JJ's only escape plan was to hit the mat—to duck away from Morgan's watchful eyes and find a way to tire herself out. Anything to make her mind shut down so she could rest.

She'd always hated push-ups. That seemed like a good, distracting place to start. At least it did in theory—or better yet, in an alternate universe where she'd never had to recover from a fucking explosion—because in practice the action sent a flare of pain through her shoulder. It was sharp enough to make JJ wince, but not enough to make her stop. The shoulder had mostly healed and was easy to hide by the time her bruises faded and the higher-ups decided she could go home without raising suspicion, but it still twinged a bit when she pushed her limits. She hoped Morgan hadn't seen her flinch.

"You okay? I didn't think you landed that hard earlier." Of course he noticed; she should have known.

JJ shook her head. "Wasn't you." In retrospect she didn't know why she'd thrown out a perfectly good excuse like that.

Morgan's brow furrowed. "No?" Her reps were speeding up way past a point that could have been comfortable with an injury, but he forced a casual shrug. "I didn't know the Pentagon was so rough and tumble."

JJ's arms paused mid-pushup as she froze in place. "I bet there's plenty you don't know," she eventually joked, but her voice was strained. Pair that with the way her neck dropped to hide her face and Morgan saw the avoidance in her clear as anything. He didn't like it, but JJ was where she was—he could push gently.

"Guess I don't rank high enough to get the scoop on that, huh?"

JJ winced as the ache in her shoulder turned into more of a stab. She flipped over to switch to crunches. "It's a boring story anyway."

"All right, never mind. You know how much I like to be entertained." JJ's heart left her throat when Morgan leaned back against the bleachers, conceding his hunt for details with another reassuring, overblown grin.

She knew what he was doing by laying it on so thick—keeping things light; giving her space—and she was so, so grateful for that. She just wished he could do something about the sympathetic look in his eyes, because the longer JJ felt them on her the more she wanted to scream.

He doesn't know, JJ reminded herself. But the way Morgan was watching her felt so much like the way Cruz had—in that suffocating medical tent and even more in the weeks after. Cautious. Worried. Too understanding. JJ stepped up her crunches, hoping the burn they caused might derail her train of thought.

No luck.

She'd never seen pity in Mat's eyes, and not even a hint of blame. Part of JJ wished she had, because her own head was spinning with it and having someone echo her self-recrimination might have made her feel less alone. Less crazy.

It was my job to take care of you. My job to find the traitor working beside me. And instead…

No—she'd been down that path before, and JJ really didn't like what she found there. She was glad to have exertion as a cover for her increasingly harsh breaths; for the pained curl of her lips; for the maddening sheen of tears that she'd thought, optimistically, she had finally shaken off. Too much more and she knew that Derek would see right through her, though—she needed to focus.

What are three things you can hear? she tried, continuing her workout as she fought to centre herself. Be here, not in Afghanistan.

One: the blood pounding in her ears. Two: cars driving by on the street outside. Three: the creak of Morgan's shoes against the floor as he shifted position.

Her breathing slowed a bit. Good. Three things you can see.

The dust motes circling the rafter lights as she curled backward. The heavy bags across the room, visible when she curled up. The bare expanse of her stomach—sweat-slicked, taut…

Not growing. Not pregnant. A sob tore free before JJ could stop it.

Damn it.

"Take a breath," Derek's soft voice instructed as she buried tear-filled eyes in the heels of her hands. "It's all good, JJ; it's just us here."

He was watching again—JJ felt it as she choked back the tremors in her throat—and she needed to deflect before he really reacted. It wasn't that she couldn't talk about it, as far as the op was concerned. People miscarried all the time; that wasn't suspicious. It was just that JJ really couldn't talk about it.

But as hard as she tried to make a plan, her mind was roaring with a white noise that she couldn't think past. When she shifted her palms and found Morgan's feet in her field of view, she still didn't know what to say.

"Sorry," was all she managed, voice crackling.

"No, come on. I don't want to hear that," Morgan chastised. JJ felt a rustling as he settled beside her; felt his hand rest carefully on her back. His voice was the gentlest she'd ever heard it. "I miss her too, Jayje."

The reassurance made JJ gasp out a startled laugh. It was relieved, tearful, and totally inappropriate for the moment, but she knew Derek wouldn't fault her for that.

She didn't correct his assumption. She did miss Emily, desperately. It just wasn't in the same way that he did.

For her, Emily was just out of reach. JJ couldn't contact her; couldn't ask her how she felt or if she was safe. She had no way to reassure herself when she woke up haunted by the way Emily had crumbled and then steeled herself in the space of a blink when the pilot announced their initial descent into Paris. But JJ could log on to their scrabble game and see that Emily had played the word 'chutzpah' off of her own less-impressive move. It was a terrible, but fixable, kind of loss.

Morgan, though—he missed Emily in a way that meant dealing with her being gone forever, and that made it easy for him to read his own grief into what he saw in JJ. Part of her worried that he would look back at these as crocodile tears when he found out that Emily was alive, but for now JJ was too relieved to care. It felt good to grieve her own loss while she had something else to hide behind.

Thank god for Emily, her mind supplied. I can't hide this myself. It took JJ a stunned moment to register that, for a second, she'd actually been grateful for the worst trauma in her friend's life. The thought made her blood run cold. She swallowed back a swell of nausea and wondered if she'd be able to look Emily in the eye when she finally got the chance.

Morgan reacted to her sudden pallor by sliding his water next to JJ, leaving it there for her to ignore. "Deep breaths," he repeated. JJ complied, and it helped a bit. She nodded her thanks as Morgan's hand ran in gentle strokes across her shoulders.

"I thought I knew how to do this," she rasped.

"There's no playbook for grief, JJ. You know that."

Yeah, she knew. The miscarriage felt different than her other losses, though. She couldn't say it went deeper—'deeper' felt like she was betraying her sister; her dad… like she was writing them off as less important than a child she'd never met. She didn't know the right word for it. But this time JJ felt lost in her grief in a way that she didn't recognize.

"I know it gets better with time," she agreed. At least she hoped those rules applied. "I've lived through that. But right now I can't picture it."

The break in her voice made Morgan's throat clench. "It will," he promised. "I'm seeing it right now." Every part of her looked defeated—from the slump of her shoulders to the restrained quiver of her lips—but all of that was still better than withdrawn and stoic. "You're starting to feel it, JJ; that's progress."

It was almost like he'd burned her, with the way she stiffened under his palm and jerked away from his touch. With some distance between them JJ finally dared to meet his eyes, but she looked so betrayed that he almost wished she hadn't. "What the hell, Morgan? I've been 'feeling it' all along."

"No, I know. I've never doubted that," he placated, stretching out a hand that stopped just short of touching JJ's clenched fist. "But it seems like you've been working pretty hard to avoid thinking about how much you feel it." Her eyes snapped closed. "Am I wrong?"

She didn't answer, but she didn't have to. He saw it from the moment she reappeared after Emily went AWOL—the down-to-business cool exterior that JJ was so good at wearing. That demeanor had locked into place afterwards, too. She'd had a hand in every arrangement; tried to do everything for everyone… She seemed numb, like they all were, and she seemed guilty; Morgan didn't know what else to call it. It's not like he could blame her. He couldn't imagine having to be the person who looked everyone in the eye and told them that Emily was gone.

Morgan shuffled closer, facing JJ, and breathed a bit easier when she didn't pull away. "Jayje, I get it. It's normal. I guess I've just been waiting for the moment when it really hit you."

"Oh," JJ managed. It was jarring to see herself and her reactions reflected back in someone else's eyes. She'd been watching them all so closely that she hadn't stopped to think that they were watching her, too.

Of course they were, though; it was ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Part of her had known it all along. She saw the way Rossi's brows twitched almost imperceptibly as he scrutinized her, like they always did when his mind was spinning away at a problem. She remembered the expectant way that Penelope had studied her as they mingled aimlessly after the funeral, looking for something, before her eyes had softened in understanding and she'd pulled JJ into a steady hug. JJ knew she was good at managing perceptions; it was what she did every day. But this was her family. She wondered how long she'd have managed to hide behind shock before one of them got suspicious.

She wondered what that would have meant for Emily, and the possibilities made her heart sink in her chest. "I… oh."

"Hey, I see you reading into that," Morgan admonished. JJ schooled her expression to erase the worst of her shock. "I've been worried; that's all I'm saying. It's a hard fall when it hits you, and I don't like the idea of you doing this alone."

Neither did JJ, but she'd resigned herself to it. Hotch knew about Emily and Mat knew about Afghanistan, but nobody had enough pieces to see how JJ's secrets were feeding each other. She hated that they were. Her grief was more convincing now, and that was good for Emily, but god she didn't want her baby's death to have a silver lining.

"What about you?" she snapped. JJ knew she was aiming at the wrong target, but she couldn't let the conversation stay focused on her if she was going to keep it together. "Spence says you never leave the office lately. Don't lecture me about going it alone."

Morgan squared his jaw, but his probing stare softened. "All right, fair enough," he agreed. "Look, I'm not criticizing. I just think we all need to find a way forward."

She conceded the point with a sullen shrug. "So what's yours?"

"I mean, you heard the genius," Morgan chuckled, running a self-conscious hand across his nape. "Apparently I never leave the office. Kid probably has a spreadsheet to prove it."

JJ's answering laugh erased the last of the bite from her voice. "How's that working for you?" she asked gently.

Morgan leaned back with a sigh, considering JJ and considering his answer. It was working for him, he just couldn't tell her why—not as he watched her try to bat away stray tears and pretend they were nothing. He didn't have a solid lead on Doyle, and right now her grief didn't need to get more complicated. The last thing Morgan wanted to do was get her hopes up and turn JJ into another person he might let down.

And anyway, 'working' was a matter of opinion here. It's not like revenge was the healthiest way to cope.

"You're right; it's not a solution. But things seem easier when I keep busy."

JJ raised a brow. "For a while, maybe. Until you burn out."

He shrugged. "I'll take what I can get."

JJ looked away with a shaky nod. There was that guilt creeping in again, and Morgan hated the way it made her shut down. Except that wasn't really fair. The only reason JJ could shut down now was that she'd already opened up plenty—whether she'd meant to or not—and it's not like he'd given her much in return. He owed her that.

And for a change, Morgan realized, he could contemplate talking about Emily without his chest clenching in dread. He steeled himself with a breath.

"I want to do right by her," he confessed. That got JJ's attention. "However I can. That's why working helps—I like being buried in a case where maybe I can do something good. Protect people." People generally, sure; that would always be a way to honour Emily. But Declan especially. He could hardly think of anything more important.

"Derek…" Her voice trailed off, but the startled look in her eyes made up for it by saying everything. Morgan mustered up a wan smile.

"It's not the same as coming through for her when it counted," he sighed. "But it's something."

He should have known that JJ wouldn't put up with that old brand of self-pity. Morgan almost cowered under the look she fixed him with—this forceful mix of compassionate and brook-no-arguments intense—and all he could think was that this was the kind of tough love that Henry was in for when he hit the teen years. Poor kid didn't stand a chance.

"None of what happened was your fault," JJ insisted as she stared him down. "Emily would hate to hear you talk like that."

"I know," he agreed. He'd had that argument with himself once or twice.

"So if she can't call you out, I will." JJ pulled her shoulders back, swiped the drying tracks on her cheeks, and generally tried to look less pitiful and more resolute.

The amused glint in Morgan's eyes told her that she'd pulled it off. "Lucky for me," he grinned, shifting over to her side and looping an arm across her shoulders.

They settled into a pensive silence that Morgan interrupted with a friendly kiss against her crown and a simple, hushed affirmation. "This sucks, huh?"

"Yeah," JJ mused. Being home was a relief, but it was a complicated one—living in the day-to-day reality of her secrets was hard. The truth was that Emily would call Morgan out for a lot of things, but not for this. She'd internalize instead—feel guilty that Morgan felt guilty—so as far as JJ was concerned it was her job to keep his guilt from festering. Someone had to make sure that, when Emily came back, she had a safe place to land.

The harder truth was that her miscarriage felt like more than just a loss, and lately when she looked at Henry the first thing she saw was the brother he could have been if she'd done her job differently.

"Hey," Morgan nudged, pulling JJ from her train of thought. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we make a pretty good team."

JJ nodded her agreement; waited for him to continue.

"So what do you say we both work on it? Together." His fingers pressed gently against the knotted muscles in her back. "It's pretty foolproof; I already know you can kick my ass in gear."

JJ laughed despite herself. She knew it couldn't be as simple as that—not when she had to withhold so much from him. But the more JJ tried to grapple with things alone, the more she needed something solid to hold on to. He could be that for her.

"Okay," she offered, sending him a tentative smile. "Deal."

Morgan returned her smile with a full-fledged grin. "Okay," he echoed, voice tinged with relief. He must have found reassurance when he searched her eyes, because he waited just a single, careful beat before putting that deal in action. "How 'bout you give me a baby step, JJ. Where's your head right now?"

JJ's throat caught at the question and she closed her stinging eyes. She couldn't stomach another lie, but she had two basic truths—they were real, no matter how complicated the webs behind them were.

"I want Emily to be here," she told him. "I'm tired of losing people I love."

Morgan's hand closed around hers, with a barely-there tremble in his touch that vanished when he grasped tighter. "Yeah," he sighed. "Me too."

Her secrets were isolating—they prickled under her skin where no one could reach; they turned into outright deceptions that weighed heavily on JJ's shoulders. But the details were the main problem. Underneath that, there was just loss, and that was something she knew Derek understood. They all did. Her secrets might be deeper now, and JJ hated that. But somehow, strangely, it made her feel less alone.

A/N: Quick FYI: this year's Profiler's Choice Awards are now up and running, and they're taking nominations until Dec. 31.

I'm not mentioning it to solicit votes for myself (this story isn't eligible, though I think some of my others are), but rather to encourage you to check it out and consider sending in a ballot if you're interested. It's a great way to recognize your favourite Criminal Minds stories & authors, especially the folks who post regularly!

For more info, check out the Profilers Choice Awards 2015 forum (search field in the top right corner; change "Story" to "Forum")

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Thanks so much for reading. I'd love to know what you think!